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  • 16/02/2021 - General information

    The effects of treatment with antidepressant drugs evaluated through the analysis of patients’ tweets

    Researchers of the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) from UPF and Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have identified behavioural and linguistic changes in tweets in Spanish published by users suffering from depression and who are taking medication to treat this disease. Their work has been published in Journal of Medical Internet Research and was led by Ferran Sanz; with Angela Leis and Francesco Ronzano as first authors, who conducted the work together with Miguel Angel Mayer and Laura I Furlong, all from the Integrative Biomedical Informatics research group. Depression is one of the most widespread mental illnesses. According to the World Health Organization, it affects more than 322 million people of all ages and is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide.

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  • 21/12/2020 - General information

    Codi RISC research project launches web and intranet

    The Codi Risc research project, coordinated by the IMIM Health Services research group and the Neuroscience research group from the Parc Taulí de Sabadell Hospital Consortium, is launching its new website and intranet. Codi Risc is a research project on the prevention of suicidal behaviour based on the Codi Risc Suïcidi (CRS) programme, which was created and implemented in Catalonia in 2014 by the Catalan Government's Department of Health. The purpose of the Codi Risc project is to study the frequency, as well as the epidemiological, clinical, neuropsychological, and biological risk factors involved in suicide attempts and repeated suicide attempts. It also covers the implementation, effectiveness, and costs of the Catalan Government's Codi Risc Suïcidi programme, as well as the development of personalised suicide risk prediction algorithms aimed at preventing suicidal behaviour.

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  • 14/10/2020 - Press release

    Dr. Scott Boyer joins Chemotargets as new CEO

    Chemotargets, a global leader in predictive analytics solutions for the pharma and biotech sector, has appointed Dr. Scott Boyer as new CEO with the aim to consolidate its transition from a software business to a key player in the biotech sector. Dr Boyer joins Chemotargets from Swedish drug development company Klaria, where he has been CEO/CSO since 2015 and will continue as a member of the Board of Directors and as a scientific advisor. Prior to joining Klaria, he was Chief Scientist at AstraZeneca (Sweden), with global responsibility for molecular and investigational toxicology across the company, and a member of the company's senior management team.  Prior to AstraZeneca, Dr. Boyer was a senior scientist at Pfizer Central Research in the US.

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  • 15/09/2020 - Press release

    Decryption of a molecular code that regulates the behavior of the cells

    The research group of GPCR Drug Discovery at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, has deciphered how nature adjusts the response of the human cell to abundant extracellular stimuli (e.g., smell, taste, light, hormones, etc.). When a cell receives an extracellular stimulus, it initiates a signaling process that can result in major physiological changes. This process is mediated by cell membrane proteins such as G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Depending on the stimulus, those receptors regulate cell activity through different molecular mechanisms.  Extracellular stimulation of GPCRs leads to its activation and subsequently to the phosphorylation of its long intracellular tail. Interestingly, there are multiple phosphorylation patterns of the receptor tail - each of them linked to a specific signaling response. The phosphorylation code is read by intracellular proteins known as β-arrestins. In response, they typically silence the receptor and modulate intracellular kinases, which have a global impact on cell behaviour related to gene expression, cell survival and cell death. "Until now, the phosphorylation code and the involvement of arrestins in deciphering it has been an open question" explains Dr. Selent. "We have discovered the underlying molecular mechanism of how arrestin reads and translates a specific phosphorylation pattern into a cellular response" she adds.

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  • 18/08/2020 - Institutional news

    Nature Methods selects Jana Selent as the featured author of the month for August

    Dra. Jana Selent, coordinator of the GPCR drug discovery group, has been selected as the featured author of the month for the August edition in the journal Nature Methods. Recently, the Group of Dra. Selent published his latest article GPCRmd uncovers the dynamics of the 3D-GPCRome in this journal, where she presents a new tool to study one of the key elements in cell signaling, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) which are the target of almost 40% of current drugs. This tool, the GPCRmd platform, will help improve our understanding of the function of these receptors, which are critical for transmitting signals to the interior of cells. The design of this tool has been made possible thanks to a consortium of researchers from 23 different institutions of 10 different European countries and the United States, led by the group of Dr. Jana Selent and with important contributions from researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

    Més informació "Nature Methods selects Jana Selent as the featured author of the month for August"

  • 03/08/2020 - General information

    Two GRIB innovations developed in the framework of the eTRANSAFE project, acknowledged by the European Commission’s Innovation Radar

    The Innovation Radar, a European Commission initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research and innovation framework programmes, has selected two innovations developed by the GRIB in the project eTRANSAFE to be included on the Innovation Radar platform: Preclinical text mining solution for treatment response Advanced in silico modelling to predict toxicity These innovations, stemming from the project work, have been classified by the Innovation Radar as Exploring innovations in the early phases of technological readiness and have been published on the EU-funded innovations website on July 20th 2020, thus joining the 3600+ EU-funded innovations already showcased on the platform.

    Més informació "Two GRIB innovations developed in the framework of the eTRANSAFE project, acknowledged by the European Commission’s Innovation Radar"

  • 28/07/2020 - Covid-19

    Hospital del Mar and GRIB take part in the EHDEN Pilot and EHDEN COVID-19 Rapid Collaboration projects

    The main goal of the European project EHDEN: European Health Data & Evidence Network, is to carry out large-scale analysis of European clinical data (Real-World Clinical Data), using bioinformatics tools and standards based on the international OHDSI initiative and the OMOP common date model (CDM). EHDEN will speed up studies and research related to characterising patients with COVID-19 and other diseases, and evaluate the best treatments and clinical management for these patients, using millions of clinical records from all over Europe.

    Més informació "Hospital del Mar and GRIB take part in the EHDEN Pilot and EHDEN COVID-19 Rapid Collaboration projects"

  • 14/07/2020 - Press release

    New tool for studying a key drug target

    G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRS) are one of the key elements mediating basic stimuli like our response to mosquito bites or to this last-minute goal scored by our favorite football team. In fact, these proteins are the target of almost 40% of the currently approved drugs. However, until now, researchers did not have access to a tool employing molecular simulations to achieve a better understanding of GPCR function. Therefore, a consortium of researchers from 23 different institutions of 10 different European countries and the United States have joined forces to design and build a tool that will help improve our understanding of the function of these receptors, which are responsible of transmitting signals to the interior of cells. The GPCRmd platform is the result of this work, lead and coordinated by the GPCR Drug Discovery group from the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), the Pompeu Fabra University, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, with support from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

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  • 29/06/2020 - General information

    Chemotargets one of the top-20 Spanish biotech companies to watch according to the technology magazine of the Financial Times

    This month Sifted, the technology magazine of the Financial Times, has contacted various experts in the technology industry and in analyzing data on investments, has concluded that the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem has high quality healthtech startups, ranging from drug discovery to novel virtual reality therapies. In its latest edition, Sifted has published a list of the top healthcare start-ups in Spain, including Chemotargets, the IMIM's spin-off founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the Systems Pharmacology research group at IMIM. Chemotargets is a company that offers state-of-the-art methodologies with predictive capabilities that allow the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to accelerate the design and optimization of drug candidates and improve cost efficiency and safety. Its CLARITY® platform covers the entire field of drug discovery and development, from the de novo design of molecules for new targets to pharmacovigilance in the drug market stage.

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  • 25/06/2020 - General information

    IMIM participates in the Disc4All Project, an innovative training network of the European Commission

    Dr. Ferran Sanz, Dra. Laura Furlong and Dr. Baldo Oliva of the IMIM Biomedical Informatics Research Program, participate in the Disc4All project: Training network to advance integrated computational simulations in translational medicine, applied to intervertebral disc degeneration, coordinated by Jérôme Noailly, principal investigator in the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology research area at BCN MedTech of UPF. It  is one of the ten selected projects in Catalonia as an Innovative Training Network (ITN) Marie Sklodowska-Curie, in the European Commission's ITN MSC Actions call. The European innovative training networks (ITN) aim to train a new generation of researchers in their early stages who are creative, enterprising and innovative, capable of dealing with the challenges of the future and turn knowledge and ideas into products and services with an economic and a social benefit.

    Més informació "IMIM participates in the Disc4All Project, an innovative training network of the European Commission"

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