At the IGTP TODAY
Experimental Tuberculosis Unit (UTE)
The European Commission has granted two projects to the IGTP within the HORIZON programme, which add up to a total of 1,670,346 euros in funding and deal with the preclinical development of immunotherapies.
The biotechnology company Archivel Farma has designed and set up a phase IIb clinical study called CONSTAN to explore whether administering the immunotherapy RUTI®, known as the RUTI® vaccine, along with the standard treatment for patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) improves results. The principal investigator of the project is Dr Cristina Vilaplana, leader of the Experimental Tuberculosis Unit (UTE) at the Germans Trias I Pujol Research Institute (IGTP). The study has been approved by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) and the First Patient In will be welcomed in January 2022
A series of events to shine a light between the connection between art and science in times of pandemic. Events at the Can Manyé Cultural Centre in Alella and the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital.
The IGTP has taken part in a study led by researchers from the IBV Biomedicine Institute of Valencia published recently in Nature Communications. The study has increased the understanding of how genetic diversity arises in lung infections caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and how this is related to the development of antibiotic resistant variants. The study is based on surgical samples and data from tuberculosis patients form the SH-TBL cohort of the Experimental Tuberculosis Group (UTE) at the IGTP.
Researchers from the Experimental Tuberculosis Unit (UTE) led by Dr Cristina Vilaplana, have presented the results of the project COM-COVID, a questionnaire for the public aimed at understanding the effects of the pandemic on society. The COM-COVID is an initiative of the SMA-TB Consortium, led by the UTE and the IGTP, with the collaboration of the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute and the Fight AIDS Foundation. Dr Maria Rosa Sarrias from the Innate Immunity Group and Dr Carol Armengol of the c-LOG research group at the IGTP have also taken part. The results have been sent in a report by email to all the participants of the questionnaire who requested it, and the research article can also be consulted at medRxiv.
The Experimental Tuberculosis Group at the IGTP has set up this trial, coordinated from Can Ruti, within the European project H2020 ‘SMA-TB’. The study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of adding acetylsalicylic acid or ibuprofen to the antibiotic treatments applied for tuberculosis. It is a phase II trial which will be carried out in South Africa and Georgia, two of the countries the WHO has in its sights to control this infectious disease. The trial has been prepared in the midst of the pandemic, with the added challenge of coordinating it with the restrictions and different stages of the epidemic in each of the countries involved.
In 2016, the Retrovirology and Clinical Studies group at IrsiCaixa discovered how the absence of the Siglec-1 protein, involved in modulating the immune system, blocks the spread of HIV throughout the body. Now, a study led by the same research group and the Experimental Tuberculosis Unit of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) has shown that, on the other hand, this same deficiency favours the dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the tuberculosis-causing agent.
The Centre for Comparative Medicine and Bioimage of Catalonia (CMCiB), of the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), will be the second centre in Catalonia to work on the SARS-CoV-2 virus obtained directly from patients. Until now most work has taken place with artificial viruses that can only infect once. Research staff of IrsiCaixa and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) have started to work on the virus in the CMCiB to study the infection of organoids; mini organs designed in the laboratory to simulate human lungs and brains. Organoids are already being used in research and their use in studies into COVID-19 will provide better understanding of infection by SARS-CoV-2 and the capacity of different drugs to eliminate it from these tissues.
The study focusses on understanding the mechanisms that keep the infection latent without the infected person developing the disease. 90% of people infected never develop the active disease, understanding this mechanism so that we can identify them is key to eradicating tuberculosis. The research has been carried out in virtual lungs, developed by computational modelling techniques. These are the first results to be published by the 3Rs Programme at the Centre for Comparative Medicine and Bioimage (CMCiB) which aims to minimize the use of animals in pre-clinical research.
Madrid, Catalonia, Castile and León and Castile la Mancha are the autonomous regions with the highest accumulated numbers of active cases, in contrast, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, La Rioja, Murcia and Asturias have the lowest numbers of active cases. The data forms part of the study of the evolution of the pandemic based on mathematical models being carried out by the multi-disciplinary team of researchers of the UPC and IGTP.
