The objective of COVID-19-BH20 is to create and work on tools for the analysis of COVID-19. The biohackathon will lead to more easily accessible protein data, protocols, detection kits, predictions. Policy change will also be driven when it comes to non-public or hard-to-access data because we face such challenges.

The biohackathon is about applying free and open source software to open data for scientific endeavor and biomedical progress.

The biohackathon will take place from April 5 to 11, 2020. Prior to that time, the working groups will begin preparations. After biohackathon, collaborations often continue.

How can you participate?

Through the Internet, groups with topics to work on are being formed. There will be working groups for FAIR data, workflows, pangenomes and variation charts, machine learning, text mining, and visualizations. You can create a group and get people interested in your area of work. Video conferencing, email, IRC, messaging, wiki and source code repositories will be used to make it all happen.

Who can participate?

Anyone can join and contribute. Thanks to annual biohackathons in Japan and Europe, there is already an experienced community. The benefit of this virtual biohackathon is that we can expand and be as inclusive as possible. If you are a student and do not have as much experience, you can also register and contribute.

To participate:

1. Register at the following link:  Registration (link)

2. Become a member of the mailing list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/virtual-biohackathon)

3. Add it to the wiki (https://github.com/virtual-biohackathons/covid-19-bh20/wiki)

Contribute by adding or subscribing

Based on Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14, declaring the state of alarm for the management of the health crisis situation caused by COVID-19, and in application of its fourth additional provision regarding prescription and expiration terms, the deadlines established for the call for the IDIVAL 2020 Biosanitary Revitalizing Plan, are suspended during the validity of the state of alarm.

CaixaImpulse COVID-19 call seeks to support projects with results, including preliminary ones, of scientific research or with strategies and technologies in additional transfer stages that can have a significant impact on the beneficiaries.

The call is aimed at Universities, university foundations, research and transfer centers, technology centers, hospitals, hospital foundations and non-profit institutions whose main activity is research based in Spain or Portugal that has the assets resulting from the activity of investigation.

The program offers financial support of € 300,000 for a maximum of 24 months, as well as ad hoc non-financial support, reducing the barriers affected and facilitating access to mentoring, training and networking.

The constant evaluation process of two different stages:

1) A first pre-selection of applications based on a letter of intent;

2) A second selection in which the shortlisted candidates will present a complete project proposal.

Projects must include clearly targeted strategies or technologies to prevent, treat, monitor, or diagnose COVID-19 disease.

The potential transferability of the project, its development plan, its implementation and its social impact and responsible innovation will be evaluated.

Applications are open until April 15.

More information in the next link:

https://caixaimpulse.com/programme?program_id=PROGRAMME_COVID_19&program_section=OVERVIEW

Alcoholic hepatitis is a clinical picture that occurs when high amounts of alcohol are consumed in people who already have a regular consumption of it for a long time. It is an entity that in severe cases carries a very high mortality, in certain circumstances it reaches more than half of the cases in less than a month. At the present time the only therapy indicated in severe cases are corticosteroids with a moderate benefit and ballasted with potential side effects.

In many liver diseases, for reasons sometimes not well known, there is an alteration of iron metabolism. This disruption of iron parameters has proven useful as a prognostic marker in certain liver diseases. With this premise, iron alterations were evaluated in a large cohort of patients with alcoholic hepatitis, already classically known from the STHOPA study (PMID: 26176387), from the group of Prof. Mark Thursz of Imperial College London and other important leading groups alcoholic liver disease research, such as Philip Mathurin de Lille, Vijay Shah de Rochester. Transferrin values ​​were correlated with the classic markers of the severity of alcoholic hepatitis (MELD, GASH, DF) and was an independent survival marker.

This work has a second mechanistic part that is now underway, with the aim of identifying new pathogenic pathways that allow the design of new more effective therapies. 

This article arises from the stay made by Dr. Joaquín Cabezas at the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center with Dr. Ramón Bataller, thanks to a Juan Rodés Grant from the Spanish Association for the Study of the Liver (AEHH) in 2015. This work has allowed to maintain a line of research, which if not already, will soon allow Dr. Stephen Atkinson to enjoy a stay with Dr. Bataller in Pittsburg to continue the work and open new avenues of investigation.

Ref. Serum Transferrin Is an Independent Predictor of Mortality in Severe Alcoholic Hepatitis. Atkinson, Stephen R. MD1; Hamesch, Karim MD2; Spivak, Igor MD2; Guldiken, Nurdan PhD2; Cabezas, Joaquín MD3,4,5; Argemi, Josepmaria MD, PhD6; Theurl, Igor MD7; Zoller, Heinz MD8; Cao, Sheng MD9; Mathurin, Philippe MD10; Shah, Vijay H. MD9; Trautwein, Christian MD2; Bataller, Ramon MD3,6; Thursz, Mark R. MD1; Strnad, Pavel MD2Author Information. The American Journal of Gastroenterology: January 24, 2020 – Volume Publish Ahead of Print – Issue – doi: 10.14309/ajg.0000000000000492

The Pfizer Foundation Scientific Innovation Awards want to recognize Spanish researchers up to 40 years old whose works have been published in scientific journals and cited in the Science Citation Index throughout 2019.

 The best article related to scientific research will be awarded, in its basic and clinical categories, in the field of biomedicine and health sciences, fundamentally that have demonstrated the innovative use of technologies, advanced statistical techniques or the approach of new digital techniques for the development of scientific knowledge in the field of human health.

The future applicability of the published results and the innovative approach will be especially valued.

The allocation will be € 10,000 for each category (basic and clinical)

More information: Pfizer Foundation Awards: https://www.fundacionpfizer.org/convocatoria-premios-innovacion-cientifica-2020

The NEXT-VAL call promotes the development of translational research projects in the biosanitary environment of Cantabria, led by leading emerging researchers who have never accessed as such a competitive access aid.

Requirements of the principal investigator:

It will be necessary to have a principal investigator who has a labor, official or statutory relationship with the Public Health System of Cantabria, with the University of Cantabria as a professor linked to healthcare activity or, failing that, as staff of an IDIVAL research group.

The principal investigators must not be more than forty-five years old and have never had access to financing as a principal investigator in a project obtained through a call for competitive national or international aid, or in the IDIVAL Next-Val or Inn-Val calls . Training specialists are excluded.

Next-Val research projects will have a duration of two years, extendable by a third year upon express request at least two months before their completion. The maximum amount to be awarded per project is € 25,000. Total amount of the call € 100,000. Projects that have had funding in IDIVAL calls corresponding to the Next-Val or Inn-Val Programs will not be accepted. Participation in this project does not imply incompatibility with other IDIVAL calls, except those mentioned above.

Required documentation

The request will be made in a standardized model available on the aid platform that is accessed through the IDIVAL website. The following documents must be submitted together with the application:

a) Curriculum vitae of each of the members of the research team in FECYT format (reduced version), available at: https://cvn.fecyt.es/ and on the IDIVAL intranet.

b) Report of the research project including: structured summary, background and current status of the topic, bibliography, objectives, hypotheses, methodology and work plan, resources available for the realization of the project, applicability and usefulness of foreseeable results, staff experience researcher on the subject, detailed justification of the requested funding and budget.

c) If there is support for the development of the project by an IDIVAL group, this fact must be expressly reflected in the project, with a document included in the report endorsed by the IDIVAL Group Manager or Group Member Researcher with a minimum of 2 competitive projects approved in the National R&D Plan.

More information: in the following Link: https://www.idival.org/en/Central-support-unit/IDIVAL-calls

The deadline for submitting applications is from March 15 to April 15.

On March 11, the third session will take place within the IV Progress Report of the Valdecilla program, which will feature the presentations of Esther Setién and Veronica Pulito. CANCELLED

“ Stopping cannabis use benefits outcome in psychosis: findings from 10-year follow-up study in the PAFIP-cohort”

Speaker: Esther Setién Suero

Esther Setién is a doctor in Medicine and Health Sciences from the University of Cantabria (2018). She obtained her Bachelor's degree in Psychology in 2013. She completed the Master's Degree in Mental Health Research in 2014 and later in 2016 she completed a specialization course in Neuropsychology. Since 2015, she develops her career as a researcher at the Valdecilla Health Research Institute, focused on the study of cognitive functions in the first episodes of psychosis, within the program of Attention to the Initial Phases of Psychosis.

“Role of endothelial progenitor cells in interstitial lung disease associated with rheumatoid arthritis”

Speaker: Veronica Pulito Cueto

Verónica Pulito Cueto gained her Biochemistry and Molecular Biology degree in 2016 from País Vasco University. She worked as a collaborator student during 2013-2016 at Biómica de Hongos y Bacterias research group from País Vasco University, where she participated in different projects. Between 2016-2017 she gained her Molecular Biology and Biomedicine Master's degree of the Cantabria University and País Vasco University. During that period, she performed her master's degree project in the Molecular Hematology group in the Research Institute Marqués de Valdecilla (IDIVAL), Santander, Spain.

Currently, she is working as pre-doctoral researcher at the Epidemiology Genetics and Atherosclerosis Research Group on Systemic Inflammatory Diseases, IDIVAL (Santander, Spain), having been awarded a pre-doctoral contract in the Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Health Sciences area, supported by the IDIVAL and the Cantabria University.

All sessions will take place at 2:00 p.m. in Hall 16 of the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital (maximum capacity of 30 people). The talk of each speaker will be about 20 minutes followed by a small debate. In addition, at the end a small agape will be served to continue the conversation and encourage interaction between participants and attendees.

Attendance certificates will be issued if 80% of the sessions are attended throughout the academic period.

Any questions or clarifications can be contacted at Proyectos1@idival.org

The IDIVAL Transplant and Autoimmunity group, belonging to the Kidney Disease Research Network (REDINREN) funded by the ISCIII with FEDER funds, has published a recent work in its biomarker line of work associated with the clinical evolution of Renal Transplant.

Renal transplantation is the best treatment for patients with advanced chronic kidney disease compared to the rest of renal replacement therapy techniques, both in survival and in quality of life, in addition to the technique of greater cost-improvement. Thanks to the development of immunosuppressive treatments, the injector rejection rate has been reduced, especially the rejection mediated by T lymphocytes. However, antibody-mediated rejection (AbMR), in which B lymphocytes have a prominent role, remains important. , so the search for biomarkers that help their prediction and diagnosis is essential. In the present work, the role of BAFF has been studied prospectively, an appointment involved in the survival, proliferation, differentiation and maturation of B lymphocytes, as well as of various populations of B lymphocytes, as a biomarker potential, observing that patients with AbMR , developed in the first 12 months after transplantation, presents smaller serum levels pre-transplant BAFF, as well as subpopulations of B lymphocytes with a memory cell phenotype. Similar results were observed at 6 and 12 months after transplantation in patients with subclinical AbMR, detected in the protocol biopsy performed at 12 months after transplantation. The statistical analysis confirmed the role of BAFF in the development of clinical AbMR, specifically of the classic variables. Therefore, it has been proposed that serum levels of BAFF, as well as a polarization of B lymphocytes towards a memory cell phenotype, can be used as non-invasive biomarkers useful in predicting the development of AbMR.

This work published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences has been funded by the REDINRED Network, the Carlos III Health Institute and the Marqués de Valdecilla Research Institute (IDIVAL).

Ref. High Pretransplant BAFF Levels and B-cell Subset Polarized towards a Memory Phenotype as Predictive Biomarkers for Antibody-Mediated Rejection. Irure-Ventura J, San Segundo D, Rodrigo E, Merino D, Belmar-Vega L, Ruiz San Millán JC, Valero R, Benito A, López-Hoyos M. Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Jan 25;21(3). pii: E779. doi: 10.3390/ijms21030779.

The Cell Cycle, Determining Stem Cells and Cancer research group of the Valdecilla Health Research Institute (IDIVAL), led by Dr. Alberto Gandarillas, has just published a paper that includes the molecular regulation that makes it possible for epithelial cells such as skin epidermis do not die against continuous carcinogens such as sunlight.

This discovery has allowed us to identify a gene that allows the skin to function despite being exposed to the sun on a daily basis without its cells dying from apoptosis.

Dr. Gandarillas has indicated that the results of this study have direct application in epidermoid cancer, as they provide new prognostic and therapy pathways. This type of cancer, which causes about 12,000 deaths a year in Spain, is the second most frequent neoplasm and one of the leading causes of cancer death, which arises in a variety of tissues such as skin, mouth, throat, esophagus or lung. and that, in general, is usually aggressive and of bad treatment.

 As explained by Alberto Gandarillas, the continuous exposure of the cells of the epidermis to solar radiation causes DNA damage, although externally it is not manifested by a burn or reddening of the skin.

The known response of cells to genetic damage, he pointed out, is apoptosis or programmed cell death. As an example of this phenomenon, “which is widely used in antitumor therapies,” he cited the fact that radiation therapy has always been assumed to eliminate tumor cells by apoptosis.

However, in the case of the epidermis, the cells do not die by apoptosis in response to the daily effects of the sun, since “if that were the case we would not have skin,” he said.

Dr. Gandarillas has stressed that they already had a response to the phenomenon of skin peeling due to the effect of ultraviolet light, “which is not necessarily due to cell death, necrosis or burn, but to an accumulation of genetic damage.” We also knew that this response occurs in cells of the mouth and throat, which are also continually exposed to carcinogens such as tobacco and alcohol.

“But we still didn't understand,” he said, “how or why the cells of these epithelia escape apoptosis and manage to maintain tissue despite the continuous impact on their DNA.”

In this sense, it has indicated that the research work has shown that molecules that control cell division protect the epithelial cells of the skin, mouth and neck from cell death against continued genetic damage. “By eliminating the CDC20 gene, skin cells died.” Genes like this allow the existence of these tissues, their renewal and their function despite being chronically exposed to mutagens, he concluded.

The work, published in the journal 'Cell Death and Differentiation', of the Nature Group, has been carried out in collaboration with the research groups of the National Oncology Research Center (CNIO) led by Mariano Barbacid and Marcos Malumbres.

It is currently known that those patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CCRm) whose tumors have mutations at the level of certain genes involved in the EGFR receptor pathway (HER-1), such as the RAS gene (KRAS or NRAS exons 2,3 and 4 ), do not benefit from therapy with monoclonal antibodies with antiEGFR activity (Cetuximab or Panitumumab). It is less clear today, however, what may be the role or the real impact of the existence of other low frequency mutations in RAS or at the level of genes equally involved in that same pathway or cell route (BRAF or PIK3CA).

This work published in the Annals of Oncology tries to explore the potential utility of sophisticated or “high sensitivity” genotyping methodologies, comparing them with the standard methodologies commonly used to detect mutations at the RAS level in these tumors, to select patients with CCRm especially sensitive to combination treatment with a standard QT scheme (FOLFIRI) associated with an anti-FRFR monoclonal antibody (Panitumumab). This is one of the first published protocols that investigates this issue in the context of a prospective clinical trial.

To do this, several researchers belonging to the Spanish group for the treatment of digestive tumors (TTD) analyzed in a centralized way with several of these methodologies the tumor samples of 72 patients who received said therapy within a phase II protocol in 12 Spanish hospitals. All cases had been considered “a priori” as carriers of “non-mutated” (wild-type) RAS tumors using standard techniques carried out in each of these centers before beginning treatment.

According to these results, the analysis in search of alterations at the level of RAS, BRAF or PIK3CA genes with quantitative PCR (qPCR) and digital PCR (dPCR) is able to detect a greater number of alterations / mutations than conventional techniques. This is more evident the lower the cut-off point considered, the higher level of sensitivity, to label the tumors as “mutated” (5 to 0.1%). However, in general, the presence of mutations detected by this methodology does not seem to be associated with a worse tumor response (response rate) or lower clinical benefit (progression-free or global survival) associated with the administration of antiEGFR therapy in this population. compared to those cases that do not present them (“ultraselected” population).

There is an inverse correlation between the mutated allelic fraction (qPCR) and the tumor response achieved, with no statistically significant differences being reached between the different levels or cut-off points investigated in this work. More specifically when this value is below 5%, higher level of sensitivity, there are no differences in the response rates achieved between the subgroups, thus applying this percentage as the optimal cut-off point to try to classify patients in this clinical context This is contrary to what was previously suggested by other groups of researchers who propose lower cut-off points (1%), yes, always based on observations derived from retrospective series of patients.

Therefore, according to this work, despite demonstrating in principle these methodologies as more sensitive techniques to detect mutations at the level of the EGFR receptor pathway and its intracellular mediators, however, these tools do not seem to be more useful tools to make a better selection of Candidates to receive these treatments compared to other less sensitive methodologies, usually used so far in this context, with a minimum level of detection of around 5%.

On the other hand, the existence of BRAF level mutations has been confirmed, as in previous studies, as a factor of poor prognosis in these patients. However, since in all cases with this alteration the mutated allelic fraction has been greater than 10%, the prognostic impact of minor subclonal mutations in this gene could not be assessed. Unfortunately, due to the low frequency of detection of mutations at the level of BRAF and PIK3CA in this type of patients even with the use of the most sensitive techniques, it has not been possible to definitively determine the impact of these alterations in predictive terms in relationship with antiEGFR therapy. It would therefore be desirable to try to expand the series with a view to trying to clarify these and other issues of relevance to this population.

Ref. Phase II study of high-sensitivity genotyping of KRAS, NRAS, BRAF and PIK3CA to ultra-select metastatic colorectal cancer patients for panitumumab plus FOLFIRI: the ULTRA trial. Santos C, Azuara D, Viéitez JM, Páez D, Falcó E, Élez E, López-López C, Valladares M, Robles-Díaz L, García-Alfonso P, Bugés C, Durán G, Salud A, Navarro V, Capellá G, Aranda E, Salazar R. Ann Oncol. 2019 May;30(5):796-803. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdz082. Epub 2019 Dec 4. PMID: 31987347