Society

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Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron Hospital discovers the essential role of a protein for colorectal cancer cell division

CNA / Marine Berton

This is a real stride for the cancer research. The effects of a protein called condensing on colorectal cancer have been found out by a team of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry experts, at the Research Centre for Nanomedicine (CIBBIN-Nanomedicine) at the Vall d'Hebon Research Institute. The researchers have discovered that condensin helps the tumor cells to divide rapidly, so its inhibition leads to the death of tumour cells. The results of this research were published in the 'Journal of Biology and Chemistry', and they constitute a real hope for the fight against colorectal cancer.

March 5, 2013 07:58 PM

The Spanish Supreme Court validates the Catalan school model based on the principle of linguistic immersion

CNA

The Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal presented by one family against the Catalan Supreme Court’s decision adopted in March last year that validated the current public school model of linguistic immersion. The Spanish Supreme Court has stated that the Catalan Government does not have to change the entire Catalan school model, which has been in place since the early 1980s. However, it does have to consider individual petitions from families wanting to school their children in Spanish and make Spanish the language of instruction “in the proportion that the Catalan Government considers to be convenient” in “the school and class in which the offspring of the petitioner is being taught”.

February 26, 2013 10:15 PM

Transport workers strike coinciding with the Mobile World Congress is cancelled

CNA / Rosa Soto

The Spanish Drivers and Railway Assistant Workers Trade Union, which had called for the strike, has reached an agreement with the Catalan Government’s trains operating company and has cancelled the protest, scheduled for the 25th-28th of February. The strike had been planned to coincide and affect the Mobile World Congress, the main international event of the cell-phone-related industry, to be held in Barcelona next week.

February 22, 2013 08:33 PM

A Catalan study shows that a world-pioneering dialysis technique reduces patient mortality by 30%

CNA / Elisenda Rosanas

The technique started in Catalonia in 2007 and by 2011 it was practiced on 40% of patients with renal failure. The Catalan Health Ministry hopes to cover 100% of the cases within the next 5 to 10 years. In the United States it started being used a year ago as they were waiting for clinical results to expand its use. Now, a clinical study on 900 patients from 27 different Catalan centres has proved that the technique reduces mortality by 30% on patients with kidney failure within the first three years. In addition, it improves quality of life, reduces hospitalisations by 22% and it also makes hypotension episodes drop by 28%.

February 15, 2013 09:10 PM

The Mediterranean diet reduces by 6% the risk of developing breast cancer

CNA / Elise Griset

Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology have led the largest international study on breast cance4r and nutrition. The 8-year study has been based on 335,062 women between 35 and 70 years old. It has involved 23 centres in 10 European countries and it has been published in the ‘International Journal of Cancer’. The study concludes that the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 6% among women in general and 7% in the case of post-menopausal patients.

February 14, 2013 03:57 PM

Type 1 diabetes has been totally cured for the first time in large animals thanks to the work of Catalan researchers

CNA / María Belmez

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have managed to completely cure dogs with type 1 diabetes through a single session of gene therapy. It is the first time ever that the effectiveness of a treatment against this illness in large animals has been proved in the world. This achievement opens the door to being able to translate a similar therapy to humans and cure type 1 diabetes, which currently has no cure and means that patients have to control their blood insulin levels for their whole lives through hormone injections, as untreated it can be fatal. Diabetes mellitus type 1 is an autoimmune illness that destroys the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin, an essential hormone in the process of transforming glucose into energy for the body’s cells.

February 7, 2013 11:14 PM

Catalan centres are at the core of the billion-euro graphene and human brain research projects funded by the European Commission

CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

Through its FET-Flagship programme, the European Commission is allocating €1 billion to each of the two main research projects in Europe. The first one is a project to explore the properties of graphene, a new material deriving from graphite that might revolutionise industry as silicon did a few decades ago. The second one will simulate a human brain in order to understand how it exactly works. The Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology is one of the nine leading institutes coordinating the graphene project, in which 623 research groups from 32 different countries will participate. Furthermore, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center will take care of the calculations at a molecular level in the Human Brain Project.

January 30, 2013 10:17 PM

Barcelona has now a soup kitchen in every district of the city

Marine Berton

A new soup kitchen opened a week ago in the Eixample district, in downtown Barcelona, with a capacity for a hundred places. Barcelona City Council has increased the funding intended for social dining facilities in its 2012 budget by 69%. Expanding the number of places and soup kitchens is “a key priority” of the city to guarantee access to food for everyone, according to Maite Fandos, Deputy Mayor for Social Affairs. The capital of Catalonia now has 17 soup kitchens and can attend 1,540 users each day. In 2012, the City Council’s soup kitchens served a total of 380,737 meals to 10,423 users.

January 30, 2013 07:21 PM

Scottish multinational requests permission to look for gas and petrol on Catalan coast

CNA / Laia Ros

A Scottish multinational has asked permission from the Spanish Ministry of Industry in order to look for hydrocarbons on the Catalan coast, in front of the Costa Brava and Maresme areas. This request has been made shortly after another company, Teredo Oils United, has been authorised to seek for fossil fuels in the Catalan counties of Ripollès, Garrotxa and Osona. Ecologist groups criticise the procedure due to their “serious impact on the marine ecosystems”. Allegations or other offers to carry out the project that can compete with the original one, may be presented over the next two months.

January 29, 2013 09:01 PM

Catalan scientists discover that umbilical cord stem cells can treat heart attacks and strokes

CNA / Laia Ros

According to experiments tested on mice, Catalan scientists have affirmed that the stem cells located in the human umbilical chord, which are multipotential and therefore can become different types of cells, can be used to regenerate the tissue affected by a heart attack or a stroke. Until now the only way to recover the damaged tissue was through pharmacological treatment or a heart transplant.

January 25, 2013 08:06 PM

Time spent between the first and the second chemotherapy treatment increases survival rate in bladder cancer

CNA / Rosa Soto

A research group led by Catalan doctor Joaquim Bellmunt at the Hospital del Mar has shown in a study how important the time between two chemotherapy treatments is in increasing the curing rates of bladder cancer. The study was published by the journal ‘European Urology’ and has encouraged the researchers to develop new drugs for treating this type of tumour.

January 23, 2013 06:17 PM

Treating HIV just after the infection delays the damage to the immune system

CNA

An international study with the participation of the Hospital Clínic IDIBAPS, which is a leading research centre at a world level on AIDS/HIV and other common diseases, has proved that an anti-retroviral treatment carried out just after the infection delays the damage to the patient’s immune system and reduces the risk of transmission. The results of clinical tests on 366 infected individuals confirmed that the sooner and longer an initial anti-retroviral treatment is applied, the later the life-long treatments have to start. However, despite the results, researchers insist that is still too soon to change the current AIDS/HIV treatment protocols.

January 18, 2013 12:11 AM

The University of Barcelona and the Hospital Clínic unveil a new biomedicine centre with more than 200 researchers

CNA / María Belmez / Elisenda Rosanas

The IDIBAPS has opened a new research centre of more than 5,000 m2, where more than 200 researchers split into 23 different research groups will be working. It will focus its work on oncology, neurosciences and cell therapies along with infectious, respiratory, cardiovascular and renal diseases. The new centre has been possible thanks to a donation by the private foundation CELLEX, sponsored by Pere Mir. The new centre is located within the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Medicine, which is integrated into the prestigious Hospital Clínic. The centre consolidates Catalonia, and in particular Barcelona, as one of Europe’s main biomedical poles.

January 11, 2013 12:08 AM

Barcelona taxi drivers end their protest after reaching an agreement to eliminate the new shifts

CNA

After two days of protests making Barcelona El Prat Airport being without cabs for several hours, taxi union representatives and the Metropolitan Taxi Institute – in charge of managing the sector – have agreed to eliminate the shift system and find another way to reduce the number of taxis on the streets. Taxi drivers have stopped all their protests and they will be using the previous system establishing two days of rest per week. The shift system had been implemented to better pair the availability of taxis to the real demand, which has decreased because of the recession. The system had been approved by Barcelona taxi drivers in a binding referendum. However, one week after its implementation, some of them protested stating that it had reduced their turnover.

January 9, 2013 11:58 PM

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