- The newly created National Platform of Biobanks and Biomodels was launched via the ISCII Platforms scheme
- The Platform will coordinate the supply and generation of organoids and models, to the benefit of the biomedicine and life sciences community
- The coordination of this new Platform was granted to the researcher Núria Montserrat, of the IBEC, for a period of three years
The Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) Platforms are a collective of research centers and groups that share their high-level scientific-technical capacities with research groups of the Spanish National Health System (SNS). The Platforms are oriented towards health sciences and patients and their families and were created with the perspective set on Horizon Europe. The aim: to make Spanish groups more competitive in the context of the new program.
In addition to the Biobanks and Biomodels platform, ISCIII added in the 2020 call new capabilities to the Clinical Research and Clinical Trials Platform (SCREN), now known as the ISCIII Support Platform for Clinical Research. Additionally, in the commitment with the fostering of industry and as an evolution of the Innovation Platform in Medical and Healthcare Technologies (ITEMAS), another platform was added with the aim of facilitating the industrialization of the research and development of the National Health Service.
Biobanks: a key contribution towards biomedical research
In the context of these ISCIII-promoted structures, the coordination of the National Platform of Biobanks and Biomodels, has now been awarded to Nuria Montserrat, ICREA Research Professor and principal investigator at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), for a period of three years.
Biobanks store biological samples for use in research and have a key role in biomedical research, in the case of the new platform further complemented also by organoids and other research-oriented biological models. Such facilities enable to perform research experiments that would be otherwise very difficult or even impossible to develop.
The new platform will manage biological samples of disease by coordinating the supply and generation of organoids and/or animal models, 3D printing of organs and tissues. The platform will also manage conventional samples thanks to virtual biobanks. In this way, access is granted to a range of pre-compiled data without the access to any physical sample. This allows to decrease the risk of sample damage as well as it also offers the convenience of obtaining detailed remote queries of stored samples.
As one of the members of the State Research and Innovation Platform, researcher Núria Montserrat of the IBEC has been granted funding of 354.442 euros and a budget of 406.500 euros to carry out the coordination of the Platform for Biobanks and Biomodels, which will be a facility of reference for biological and biomedical research at the national level.
Image credits:
Picture of IBEC researcher Núria Montserrat kindly provided by IBEC, and re-used with permission.
Picture of brain tissue infected with Acanthamoeba is in the public domain and was downloaded from Pixnio.