January 28, 2022 / News, News Category
Why do blood glucose levels rise in diabetes? Dissemination talk by Joan-Marc Servitja from IDIPABS
Diabetes is a metabolic disease occurring when glucose levels in the blood are too high, as a result of the malfunctioning on the production and/or action of insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas. Last 25th of January, Joan-Marc Servitja, a BLOC project researcher, gave a talk oriented to a non-scientific public to explain the causes of diabetes and the advances on this research field.
November 19, 2021
BLOC experts: interview with Marc Azagra
Marc Azagra is a PhD student working at IBEC in the frame of BLoC. He studied Chemistry, and after a master in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrometry he decided to pursue his scientific career in the field of NMR applied to biomedicine helping with the chip and microfluidics improvement, and all related with NMR data for BLoC project. Check this video to know a bit of what he currently does in the lab. Enjoy it!
October 4, 2021
BLOC experts: interview with Marc Dubois
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.
September 27, 2021 / News, News Category
BLOC researchers participate in the “European Researchers Night”
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 24th 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.
July 26, 2021
BLOC Experts: Interview with Dian Weerakonda
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!
June 14, 2021 / News, News Category
BLOC Experts: Interview with Vicent Ribas
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.
June 7, 2021 / News, News Category
A new scaffold allows pancreatic islets to adopt spheroid-like architecture in vitro
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.
May 17, 2021 / News, News Category
Irene Marco-Rius launches her own research group as principal investigator
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".
April 19, 2021 / News, News Category
BLOC Project: towards a new technology to monitor diseases
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.
March 31, 2021 / News, News Category
BLOC Experts: Interview with Alba Herrero
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!