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Anna Novials and Vincent Ribes presented their research to members of the Diabetes Association of Catalonia. The visitors had the opportunity to learn a bit more about the disease and to know the cutting-edge research that is being carried out at IDIBAPS.

Last 19th of October it took place the 15th edition of the IBEC Symposium, an annual meeting where bioengineering is in the centre of the scene.  Among several renowned national and international invited researchers, BLOC was present with a flash talk and a poster showing part of the work done at the “Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine” laboratory at IBEC.

Researchers led by Javier Ramón-Azcón from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia develop a “gym on a chip” that will help to study diabetes and find new drugs to treat the disease. The dispositive allow to study, in vivo, the crosstalk among different organs. In this paper, researchers combine muscle and pancreatic cells on a single chip and demonstrates that insulin production by the pancreas during exercise is induced by the contraction of muscle cells.

Alba Herrero, Marc Azagra and Irene Marco-Rius from the Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine Laboratory at IBEC, have developed a viable cryopreservation method to preserve bioengineered, three-dimensional (3D) cell models, including patients’ samples. The results of their work have been recently published on the Biomedical Materials Journal

Matthew Fallon is a mechanical engineer  with experience in several engineering fields as draughtsperson, CAD engineer and project engineer. Few months ago, he joined BLOC Project, where he brings all his knowhow working as a junior designer at Oxford Instruments. For sure an important piece for the project!

Researchers led by Javier Ramón from BLOC project, in collaboration with IDIBAPS research center in Barcelona, have developed nontoxic small spheres able to respond to variations in glucose levels, and producing insulin in vitro. These biomimetic spheroids containing pancreatic β-cells were prepared based on 3D bioprinting. This approach might help in the future improving clinical outcomes of β-cell transplantation strategies for diabetes treatment, as well as for in vitro drug screening platforms.

A Dynamic Nuclear Polarisation (DNP) Polariser for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has been recently installed at IBEC, coordinator of BLOC project, being the only one in operation in Spain, and among the few ones existing in Europe. This equipment can improve up to 10000 folds the signal compared to a conventional NMR procedure and allows for the study of cellular metabolism in real time.

Each 11 February we celebrate worldwide the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with the aim to eliminate gender stereotypes and long-standing biases that keep girls and women away from science. This year, BLOC participated with two talks to 11-12 years-old students to help normalizing the presence of women in scientific fields.