At the IGTP TODAY

News

- Campus Can Ruti, Outreach

Can Ruti welcomes students from Badalona for the Science Week

Nearly 200 baccalaureate and vocational training students from the Badalona institutes visited the centres at the Can Ruti Campus. The event "Open House, get to know the Can Ruti Campus up close", organised by the Badalona Education Service and IGTP, in coordination with other institutions on the Campus, has become a flagship initiative of the Science Week.

- Campus Can Ruti, Research

New study finds a promising combined therapy for multiple sclerosis

Researchers from Barcelona's Germans Trias i Pujol Institute and Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute have found a potential new way to improve the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) using a novel combined therapy. The results, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, builds on two harmonized Phase I clinical trials funded by the European Union, focusing on the use of Vitamin D3 tolerogenic dendritic cells (VitD3-tolDCs) to regulate the immune response in MS patients. The team is now preparing to move into Phase II trials to further explore these findings.

- Research

New insights into the mechanisms of how tolerogenic therapies reduce aggressive immune activity in treatments for auto-immune and inflammatory diseases

The Immunopathology research group with the Immunology service and the Multiple Sclerosis Unit at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and Institute continue their research to develop treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS). Their latest paper published in Frontiers of Immunology, examines the mechanisms by which vitamin D3-dendritic cells are used to alter a patient's own lymphocytes so they can be used to inhibit autoimmune responses.

- Research

The IGTP cytometry core facility is a reference for spectral cytometry in Europe

The Cytometry core facility, headed by Dr Marco Antonio Fernández, is one of the 9 European laboratories developing multidimensional panels for spectral cytometry to study the immune response to COVID-19 with the company Cytek Biosciences. Now the IGTP is one of the reference centres in this technology, the result of work in laboratories in Holland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain.

- Research

The Immunopathology Group part of a European consortium developing cellular immunotherapies

The official kick-off meeting of the consortium INsTRuCT (INnovative Training in myeloid Regulatory Cell Therapy) took place this week in Regensburg, Germany and Dr Eva Martínez-Cáceres, Head of the Immunopathology Research Group, took part. InsTRuCT is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, within the Horizon 2020 research funding programme. Its members are European researchers from the areas of academia and business and their aim is to carry out basic and clinical research to develop immunotherapies based on myeloid regulatory cells (MRC).

- Projects, Research

The IGTP closes its successful coordination of a COST Project to develop cellular therapies

Since 2007 the Immunopathology Group led by Dr Eva Martínez-Cáceres and Dr Cristian Ramo Tello at the IGTP has been working to develop a new treatment for autoimmune diseases, in this case for multiple sclerosis.  To help their work in this task, Dr Martinez Cáceres has coordinated a COST project, a European network of scientists working on similar problems; the project concluded in 2017 and has now published its scientific report.