+34 620 10 75 37info@nanbiosis.com

Nanbiosis

You are here : Home / 2019 (Page 14)

Laura Lechuga, Scientific Director of Unit 4 of NANBIOSIS Coordinates a EuroNanoMed project

ABISENS Monitoing of Acquired Brain Injury and recovery biomarkers by the combined label-free nanosensing of multiple circulating molecules is one of the project awarded in the EuroNanoMed III joint call, will be coordinated by Laura Lechuga through the CIBER-BBN

Abisens will employ the Unit 4 of Nanbiosis, Biodeposition and Biodetection Unit or the multiplexed biofunctionalization of the biosensor chips and their methodology optimisation

The evaluation of patients after brain injuries, which produces severe impairments, remains a major unmet clinical need. Nowadays the diagnosis, prognosis and the efficacy of rehabilitation treatments are mainly assessed by clinical examinations, neuroimaging and electrophysiological tests during a long hospitalization stay. The aim the project is to offer as an alternative a new nanobiosensor platform able to identify and quantify multiple brain biomarkers in blood with high sensitivity and in a short time. The new biosensor platform will employ nanophotonic waveguide circuits in combination with oligonucleotide chemistry.

The project will be characterized by a strong interdisciplinary and translational nature resulting from the meeting between real clinical needs and high-level technological integration of biosensing and bimolecular aspects.

• Read More

NANBIOSIS Against Cancer

The World Health Organization, the International Cancer Research Center (IARC) and the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) celebrate February 4 of each year as World Cancer Day

Every year, 14 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed worldwide and the disease causes 8.2 million deaths.

Thanks to scientific research, great advances have been made in the fight against cancer. Through surgery, chemotherapy or radio therapy and, in the last 20 years, through immunotherapy, hormonal treatment or cell therapies, tools have been obtained to improve early diagnosis and treatments, increasing cancer survival by 20%.

The only way to understand cancer and, someday, eradicate it or eliminate the suffering and death due to this disease, is RESEARCH

NANBIOSIS as an ICTS (Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructures) for biomedical research plays a very important role in the fight against cancer. Some examples are bellow:

Thanks to a coordinated action between units U1 of Protein Production Platform (PPP), U18 of Nanotoxicology and U29 of Nucleic Acid Synthesis, NANBIOSIS is developing nanopharmaceuticals with a high degree of efficacy for the treatment of metastases in colon cancer, by using of proteins with high specificity of binding to metastatic cells and a high degree of permanence in the blood flow, loaded with anti-cancer drugs that are selectively released inside the tumor cells that are going to form the metastases. Through the public financing of a NEOTEC project and a RETOS-COLABORACION and the company NANOLIGENT SL, the first antimetastatic drug on the market will be developed.

The Protein Production Platform-PPP collaborates with research projects whose objective is the development of new cancer therapies based on recombinant modular proteins with the ability to self-assemble. These multimeric complexes have shown, in animal models, a high stability in serum and an improved biodistribution compared to that observed with drugs for clinical use. These principles have been valued in different types of cancer, including colorectal cancer and breast cancer. The modular design of these constructions allows the incorporation or substitution of direct peptides and therefore they are presented as a transversal tool for more effective treatments against cancer. In addition, the PPP has served the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) of Barcelona, the Josep Vilanueva group (CIBERONC) in the field of biomarker study and new targets associated with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Unit 6 of NANBIOSIS Biomaterial Processing and Nanostructuring Unit is working on a project in collaboration with VHIR, financed by the Spanish Goverment and CIBER-BBN, for the development of a new nanomedicine for the treatment of high-risk neuroblastoma, one of the most frequent childhood cancers.

Unit 6 is also working on the project Artificial Lymph Nodes for Cancer ImmunoTherapy (ALYCIA) A project born of a initiative of CIBER-BBN/ CIBERONC to enhance scientific interdisciplinary collaborations between research groups working on oncology and nanomedicine. Researchers of unit 6 will develop Artificial Lymph Nodes (ALN) based on dynamic 3D scaffolds able to promote efficient ex vivo lymphatic cell expansion of relevant phenotypes. Such ALN represent a new approach to lymphocyte expansion, which not only includes artificial Antigen Presenting Cells in suspension like the state-of-the-art expansion techniques, but also mimics the function of the LN ex vivo.

One of the singular capabilities of the U25 of NANBIOSIS NMR: Biomedical Applications I is the acquisition of high quality, high resolution preclinical magnetic resonance imaging/spectroscopy/spectroscopic imaging data. This allows performing leading-edge studies in preclinical cancer models such as noninvasive therapy response follow-up in murine brain tumours, revealing new response biomarkers with translational potential for brain cancer patients.

NANBIOSIS U4 Biodeposition and Biodetection Unit  is currently developing the national project PREDICT Point-of-care Nanoplasmonic Platforms for Novel High-Value Diagnostics and Therapy Follow-Up , which works in the early detection of lung cancer. PREDICT project will use the Unit 4 of Nanbiosis for the multiplexed biofunctionalization of the biosensor chips and their methodology optimisation.

Finally, Unit 20 of NANBIOSIS In Vivo Experimental Platform at VHIR, is the most implicated of the CIBER units on projects in the field of cancer, just to name some of them: H2020-NoCanTher: magnetic nanoparticles against pancreatic cancer through the use of hyperthermia combined with conventional treatment. H2020-Target-4-Cancer: nanotherapy based on polymeric micelles directed against specific receptors of tumor stem cells in colorectal cancer. H2020-DiamStar: nanodiamonds directed against leukemia for the potentiation of chemotherapy. FET-OPEN EvoNano: in silico and tumor-tumor models for the prediction of PK / PD and tumor efficacy of antitumor nanomedicines against tumor stem cells. FIS-ISCIII: polymeric micelles for siRNA and combined therapy against breast cancer tumor stem cells. CarboXigel: hydrogels for the sustained release of chemotherapeutic drugs against the metastatic spread of ovarian cancer. MelanoMir: nanomedicine applied to skin cancer, melanoma, beside other projects promoted by CIBER-BBN.

• Read More

Rosa Villa explains how New graphene implants can help to better understand the brain


A graphene implant that detects brain activity at extremely low frequencies could improve the technology of the electrodes to analyze the state of our brain, has been developed by researchers from several research institutes of the CSIC in Catalonia and the CIBER-BBN.

Last First of February , Rosa Villa, Scientific Director of NANBIOSIS U8 Micro – Nano Technology Unit was interviewed in Ágora, a program of Scientific Dissemination of Radio Aragón. Dr. Villa, researcher of the Biomedical Applications Group of the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona and CIBER in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine, explains the relevance of the research carried out, together with several institutes of the CSIC in Catalonia, on the application of new materials to the study of brain activity.

The brain is composed of many neurons that communicate with each other. This communication occurs through electric currents that are detected with electrodes placed on the surface of the head or above the brain. Brain waves are very different if we are awake or asleep or when we have certain pathologies. The electrodes with which these electrical signals
were analyzed used to be large; thanks to the microelectronics began to make increasingly smaller electrodes that could identify communications much better but that small size also makes their limited reach, since they do not always take all the degrees of frequency.

Graphene has opened the degree of frequencies to detect the electrical signals of the brain. So far the electrodes were placed on top of the hair (for example the encephalograms) but now, although it has only been done in animals for the moment, the microelectrodes are already being placed as implants on the brain itself, which are left on the surface or they dig in to access more depth. When this is done, the brain feels invaded and isolates that electrode generating a scar, which is why more compatible materials are sought that are not rejected by the brain, such as graphene. Overcoming this technical limitation makes accessible the large amount of information that is below 0.1 Hz, while it facilitates the design of new brain-computer interfaces can register a wide range of frequency of what is occurring in a site of the brain.

• Read More

Cancer metabolism in a snapshot: MRS(I)

Margarida Julià‐Sapé, Ana Paula Candiota and Carles Arús, Scientific Director and Scientific Coordinators of Nanbiosis U25 NMR: Biomedical Applications I, are the authors of a new article in the journal NMR in Biomedicine: “Cancer metabolism in a snapshot: MRS(I)”

The article contains a revision of the contribution of MRS(I) to the in vivo evaluation of cancer‐metabolism‐derived metrics, mostly since 2016. Strategies include the following: (1) quantification of single oncometabolite content such as 2HG; (2) selected metabolite ratios such as total Cho to NAA in gliomas, ratios related to Cho, Cr, citrate and polyamines in prostate cancer or Lac/Pyr in hyperpolarized 13C MRSI; and (3) the whole 1H MRSI(I) pattern, through pattern recognition analysis, allowing detection of response to therapy in preclinical brain tumours before detectable volume changes.

• Read More

Quatsomes. A new family of nanocarriers for drug delivery

The XXXVII edition of the Biennial Meeting of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ) will be held from the 26th to the 30th of May in Donostia-San Sebastian. 

Prof. Jaume Veciana, Scientific Director of NANBIOSIS and unit 06  of NANBIOSIS -ICTS  Biomaterial Processing and Nanostructuring Unit, will present on May 28th 2019 a lecture entitled “Quatsomes. A new family of nanocarriers for drug delivery” at the Simposium “From Chemistry to Nanomedicine” (http://bienal2019.com/simposios.php). In this lecture the advantages and disavatages of such a kind of nanocarriers will be presentaed as well as some of their applications as nanomedicines.”

Deadline for sending abstracts: January 30 (http://bienal2019.com/en/communications.php) 

Early registration until March 2. 

There are scholarships available for students members of the RSEQ and for any of the groups indicated in http://bienal2019.com/becas.ph

• Read More