News

En la complexitat dels éssers vius intervenen propietats físico-químiques del medi cel·lular

2012-05-11 15:44:07

Un treball dirigit per Eduardo Eyras, investigador ICREA i responsable del Grup de Regulació Genòmica del GRIB (IMIM-UPF) mostra com les formes o estructures secundàries d'ARN regulen l'splicing o empalmament alternatiu en cèl·lules de llevat (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) emprades com a model experimental.

S'ha comprovat que aquestes conformacions secundàries de l'ARN estan modificades per propietats físiques i químiques intrínseques de la cèl·lula, com ara la temperatura i el pH.

Treball de referència: Plass M, Codony-Servat C, Ferreira PG, Vilardell J, Eyras E. RNA secondary structure mediates alternative 3'ss selection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. RNA, 2012.

Beyond Omics Revolutions: Integrative Knowledge Management for Empowered Healthcare and Research

2012-05-08 15:07:00

These debate sessions led by Ferran Sanz (GRIB Director) and coorganized by the GRIB (IMIM-UPF) and the Internatinal Center for Scientific Debate B·Debate will bring together scientists and specialists from the many disciplines related to biomedical informatics in order to discuss the challenges, needs and opportunities of developing translational bioinformatics as a key tool for achieving more effective and personalized medicine.

Date: July, 3rd, 4th and 5th, 2012

Place: CaixaFòrum Barcelona

eTOX makes progress on predictive toxicology

2012-05-04 12:33:23

IMI project eTOX, coordinated by GRIB (IMIM-UPF) is making progress towards its goal of developing a predictive toxicology system called eTOXsys, which is now at the prototype stage. In a recent article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, the eTOX partners describe eTOXsys as 'a software tool able to provide useful toxicological risk and hazard assessment.' Users will simply need to enter a small amount of information, such as the structure of the compound they are interested in, and the system will use a series of advanced models to deliver information on the likelihood of potential toxicity of the compound.

Article reference: Briggs K, Cases M, Heard DJ, Pastor M, Pognan F, Sanz F, Schwab CH, Steger-Hartmann T, Sutter A, Watson DK, Wichard JD. Inroads to Predict in Vivo Toxicology -An Introduction to the eTOX Project. Int J Mol Sci, 2012; 13(3), 3820-3846. PMID 22489185. DOI 10.3390/ijms13033820.

Identified 115 proteins that would allow designing new generation anti-cancer drugs; The new drugs would be more effective and with fewer side effects.

2012-05-02 13:42:26

Researchers from the Chemogenomics Group of GRIB (IMIM/ UPF) have identified 115 proteins in silico (via computer simulation) that could be highly relevant to treat colon-rectal cancer, since they would make it possible to define the strategy to design new generation anti-cancer drugs.

According to Jordi Mestres, the coordinator of the Chemogenomics Laboratory of the GRIB “The basis of this strategy is a list of molecules that, experimentally, have been proven to be significantly more toxic for tumour cells than for healthy ones and another list of molecules that are more toxic for healthy cells than for tumour ones. These two lists of molecules are computationally processed with a methodology that allows predicting those proteins for which each molecule will have an affinity, identifying potential biological targets to develop new anti-cancer drugs”.

Reference Article: “A Chemocentric Approach to the Identification of Cancer Targets”. Beáta Flachner, Zsolt Lörincz, Angelo Carotti, Orazio Nicolotti, Praveena Kuchipudi, Nikita Remez, Ferran Sanz, József Tóvári, Miklós J. Szabó, Béla Bertók, Sándor Cseh, Jordi Mestres, and György Dormán. PLoS ONE 2012, 7: e0035582. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0035582

GRIB EXPO, a unique opportunity to bring Biomedical Informatics closer to the clinical sector and to industrial innovation

2012-05-02 12:29:28

Last thursday 26 April, saw the conclusion in Barcelona of the first edition of GRIB EXPO, a symposium organised by the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB - IMIM/ UPF). The aim of the EXPO was to bring Biomedical Informatics closer to the clinical sector and to industrial innovation, with a view to promoting the open exchange of ideas and cooperation.

With around a hundred attendees from both the industrial and the clinical sectors and the participation of more than 80 high-level scientific researchers focused on Biomedical Informatics, GRIB EXPO was a unique opportunity to explore how this discipline can offer innovative strategies in both basic and clinical research as well as in industrial innovation, especially as regards the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.

Ferran Sanz, Director of GRIB, explained that “the symposium responds to one of the GRIB’s strategic objectives, which is to increase cooperation with the business fabric while initiating an approach to the clinical sector where Biomedical Informatics can offer numerous innovative solutions of huge practical value”. These would include predicting the toxicity of potential new medicines or analysing the huge amount of genetic information produced by advanced sequencing techniques.

Dr Andrés Fernández, Director of the Area of Innovation in Biotechnology at Laboratorios Ferrer qualified the event as “an excellent forum to identify new technological approaches that increase the effectiveness of Drug Discovery and that allows making straightforward progress in simulation and virtualization processes. A unique opportunity to explore collaborations between the academic and industrial sectors”.