Last news

Dr. Marc Dubois is an engineer and leading expert on electromagnetic metamaterials for MRI. He has a strong scientific background, and he brought to BLOC project all the knowhow he gained during several years of work in top research institutes in different countries. Since October 2020 he is working at Multiwave Imaging SAS where he leads several research lines focusing on Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.

Researchers from BLOC project and the Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine group at IBEC, Irene Marco-Rius, Alba Herrero, Marc Azagra and Gergo Matajsz participated in the “European Researchers’ Night” which took place last 24^th of September in more than 300 cities from 29 different European countries. BLOC researchers took this opportunity to explain why imaging plays such an important role in science.

Mr. Dian Weerakonda is a physicist with a strong background in the field of NMR. He joined Oxford Instruments in 2017 as a service engineer and spent a lot of time travelling the world to install and commission benchtop NMR products. He made multiple contributions to the development of new products and now he is actively involved in R&D tasks. He is a key piece inside BLOC Project!

Dr. Vicent Ribas is a biochemist with a strong background in the study of metabolism. The last years he dedicated his research to understand the impact of metabolic diseases on liver function, using animal and cellular models. His knowhow is crucial for BLOC project, where he validates and interprets the measurements of DNP-NMR with in vivo models of metabolic diseases. You can check here a short video, where he describes his role in BLOC project and shows some of the work he is carrying out at IDIBAPS, and an interview where he explains in more detail some aspects of his professional profile and other topics related to the project.

BLOC co-coordinator Javier Ramón from IBEC led a work recently published in the Journal Biofabrication describing a new technology that increases the performance of pancreatic cells grown in vitro and induces their organization in β-cell clusters, similarly to the spheroid-like structures found in vivo. This new technology will be crucial to develop BLOC’s benchtop NMR to study metabolic diseases as diabetes.

The coordinator of BLoC project, Irene Marco-Rius, has been recently selected to participate in the new “la Caixa” Foundation – BIST Chemical Biology Programme and begin her own research group as principal investigator, the “Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine group".

An article about BLOC project was recently published on Cordis EU Research Results. It gives an overview of the project, including the technology and proof-of-concept, and talks about its innovative aspects and how the results can impact on biomedicine and reach the society.

BLoC is a European Project that brings together different academic and industrial partners to improve a new technology that integrates tissue engineering and magnetic resonance spectroscopy using dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP-MR), to monitor diabetes and liver diseases. Alba Herrero is a research assistant working at IBEC in the frame of BLoC. Her background and previous research experience in multidisciplinary fields add high value to the project! You can check here a short video where she briefly describes a typical work day in the lab., and also an interview where she explains in more detail some aspects of her professional profile and her role in BLoC project. Enjoy it!