Ernest Giralt is to give a public conference at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona on Tuesday 29 September at 19h.
In front of a non-specialized audience, he will present the innovative research being done to overcome the blood-brain barrier and to provide drug treatments for neurological diseases.
At 19 h on Tuesday 29 September, Ernest Giralt, coordinate of the Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Programme at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), group leader at the same centre and senior professor at the University of Barcelona, will give a talk entitled “Ambulances for the brain” at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). Addressed to all audiences, the one-hour conference is free of charge and no prior registration is required.
Ernest Giralt, awarded the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2014, will broach the breakthroughs made in his lab in an innovative cutting-edge research line in which he has been working for almost 10 years. This research offers a solution to overcome the blood barrier that protects the brain, thus allowing drugs to enter this organ.
In Professor Giralt’s words, “in the last 50 years very few new drugs have been developed to treat diseases that affect the brain, and some of these diseases, like Alzheimer’s, are spreading almost contagiously in developed societies.” The low success rate of new treatments for diseases of the brain is to a large extent due to this obstacle, which is called the blood-brain barrier and also serves as a defence system. Dr. Giralt’s talk will be devoted to the design of chemical tools called shuttles, which can carry drugs across the barrier without damaging it.
The talk forms part of conference series called Barcelona Biomed Perspectives, and it is the third one given by IRB Barcelona to the general public at the CCCB, as part of the “Science today for the medicine of tomorrow” programme. This conference series is one of the various commemorative events held to celebrate IRB Barcelona’s 10th anniversary, which falls this year.
Links:
Publi conference: Ambulances for the brain by Prof. Ernest Giralt
Barcelona Biomed Perspectives: “Science today for the medicine of tomorrow”
It is estimated that one in four people will require brain treatment at some point. While there are drug candidates for most diseases of the brain, the blood-brain barrier (BBB) poses an impassable obstacle for most of these compounds and a bottleneck for the delivery of drugs that could cure these patients.
RNE's "Inquietamente" programme has interviewed Meritxell Teixidó, IRB Barcelona research associate, about the study based on scorpion venom. "We saw that there was a peptide in the scorpion venom, chlorotoxin, which has the ability to reach the central nervous system and then act as toxin, "said Teixidó.
Link to RNE
TV3, RAC1, ABC, World Pharma News, Neuro Science, among other national and international media, have published articles about the research from the Peptides and Proteins Lab at IRB Barcelona. The study in question is inspired on the scorpion venom to deliver medicines to brain. The scientists have modified a peptide from the venom and used it as a shuttle to transport drugs across the barrier that protects the brain.
Link to TV3
