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The Board of IDIVAL at the meeting on 23rd June has appointed Professor Benedicto Crespo Facorro Scientific Director of IDIVAL. The appointment had already been announced a few weeks ago and in this way compliance with the statutes of IDIVAL where is made explicit the role of this figure in the Institute as the highest representative and spokesman in scientific matters and responsible for directing, planning and leading the scientific policy of IDIVAL.

Benedicto Crespo Facorro is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cantabria and Head of Psychiatry Section at the University Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla (Santander, Cantabria). Principal Investigator of the Psychiatry Group at IDIVAL and responsible for the area of schizophrenia and Group G26 at CIBERSAM.

Doctor of Psychiatry at the Complutense University, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship in schizophrenia research at the University of Iowa. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Cantabria.

Director of the care and research program for early stages of psychosis in Cantabria (PAFIP), his research interests encompass different lines of knowledge of schizophrenia; seeking to integrate the results emanated from clinical research, neuroimaging, genetics and basic research in people with a first episode of psychosis. Member of the editorial committee of various European, Asian and American magazines. Principal investigator of projects of the National Plan since 2001 and collaborator researcher of FP7 European projects.

He has received several awards and scientific awards: Annual Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA, 1997), Young Researcher Award of the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research (ICOSR, 2001), Reference Researcher in Psychiatry Award from Spanish Society of Psychiatry (SEPB, 2006), Bank of Sabadell “National Award for Research in Biomedicine” (2007), Best Scientific Article Valdecilla-Caja Cantabria 2013 and 2014. In the period 2000-2015, its group has published more than 180 scientific articles with Publications in leading journals of Psychiatry and Medicine such as: Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, American Journal of Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry and has developed or directed about 20 doctoral theses. Benedict has an index h 41.

Professionals of the radiotherapy oncology service of the Marques de Valdecilla University Hospital in collaboration with professionals of thePhotonics Engineering Group from the University of Cantabria develop a system to detect the position and depth of catheters in brachytherapy. This group has applied for a European patent in March 2017.

Brachytherapy is a medical technique for the treatment of cancer by which radioactive seeds are placed in or near the tumor. These radioactive sources are introduced into the patient through hollow needles, which channel inlet to the desired position. The needles can be metallic or plastic, and there are different models and manufacturers on the market.

The position of the needles and their depth are determined by the patient's treatment plan. And in turn, a correct position ensures that the treatment that the patient receives is the one desired.

The solution developed in Valdecilla consists of a brachytherapy needle positioning system that facilitates to the healthcare professional the position and depth of the needles inserted in the patient's body. This device comprises a brachytherapy grid, a catheter and a software system .

The grid is a generally matrix shaped holder with holes through which the water is introduced. In the grid developed in Valdecilla, the holes are illuminated both to indicate to the healthcare professional where to introduce each needle, and to confirm that the needle is inserted in a certain position. In addition, thanks to a probe, it is possible to know the depth to which it has been introduced.

The system works with any commercial, plastic or metal needle, and could work with any brachytherapy robot on the market.

Currently, the dump of the data regarding position information and depth of the needles to the brachytherapy robot is done manually: a professional determines it visually, and enters the data into the robot software. With this system, the professional sees through a user interface, the relative position of each needle in the grid, and the depth to which it has been introduced.

This system facilitates the work of healthcare professionals and contributes to reducing errors and improving patient safety.

El Diario Montañés

The Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness published last June 13 in the BOE the call for granting R&D projects corresponding to the State Program of Research and Technique of Excellence and the Program of Research oriented to the challenges of society.

– R&D PROJECTS 2017. Call for funding three or four year projects, without predefined thematic orientation consisting of experimental or theoretical works undertaken with the main objective of obtaining results that represent a significant advance of knowledge. Projects may be led by one or two principal researchers and may be carried out under individual or coordinated project modalities. Directed to research projects that are relevant, ambitious, with high socio-economic impact and a clear international orientation.

– PROJECTS R&D&I CHALLENGE INVESTIGATION 2017. Call for funding of three or four-year projects aimed at finding scientific-technical solutions to solve the problems posed by the challenges of society like Health, demographic change and well-being. The projects may be led by one or two principal researchers and may be carried out under the individual project or coordinated project modalities.

MODALITIES:

A) Type A: R&D projects: led by young researchers with relevant and innovative scientific and technical contributions who have not conducted research projects for the calls for proposals of the State Plan for R&D&I 2013-2016 or the National R&D&I Plan 2008-2011.

B) Type B: R&D projects: Projects led by one or two main consolidated researchers.

Both types may be led by one or two principal researchers and projects may be carried out under the individual project modalities, with a research team, or coordinated project, consisting of several subprojects, each of which will have a research team.

Submission of applications: open from June 19 to July 13, 2017 at 15:00 h (the deadline for submission of applications will depend on the thematic area in which the project is submitted).

More Information (link)

Donating organs after cardiac arrest accounts for about 30% of organ donations in most countries. However, ischemic injury, which characterizes cardiac arrest and poor perfusion of organs during this period leads to the loss of many organs from this type of donors.Although the evidence remains limited, it appears that regional normothermic perfusion using ECMO devices can increase the number of grafts recovered and improve the outcome of receptors. Thus, countries like USA, UK and Spain are generalizing the use of these devices obtaining better results compared to the conventional extraction of organs by means of super fast extraction of the organs. In fact, the results obtained at the Marques de Valdecilla Hospital have shown a much higher survival rate than the international registries in renal, hepatic, pancreatic and pulmonary transplantation. However, the theoretical possibility of perfusing the brain of a deceased patient after the death declaration has limited the widespread acceptance of ECMO devices in asystole donation. In fact, some authors have expressed concern about the theoretical risk of brain reperfusion of a donor after the death declaration. Surprisingly, no proposal has been made to minimize this possibility that has raised concerns and bioethical conflicts.

The transplant group recently published a specific methodology to avoid this theoretical complication, being the first time a proposal is made to avoid this risk. In the present study, the HUMV proposal was validated in a multicenter study with 78 donors from Puerta de Hierro (Madrid), Clínica San Carlos (Madrid), Virgen de las Nieves (Granada) and HUMV. The methodology has been validated, guaranteed in all cases the absence of this theoretical complication derived from the ECMO devices.

Reference: Miñambres E, Suberviola B, Dominguez-Gil B, Rodrigo E, Ruiz-San Millan JC, Rodríguez-San Juan JC, Ballesteros MA. Improving the outcomes of organs obtained from controlled donation after circulatory death donors using abdominal normothermic regional perfusion. Am J Transplant. 2017 Jan 31. doi:10.1111/ajt.14214.

The last conference of Santander Biomedical Lectures Program organized by IDIVAL, the University of Cantabria and the IBBTEC will take place on the 29^th of June. The conference will be given by Dr. Christian Giske from Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden and the session will focus on “Dissemination of resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli – a story of successful clones”. 

Christian Giske is the head physician of bacteriology, mycobacteriology and mycology at Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Sweden. He is also deputy head of the Division of clinical microbiology at the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Karolinska Institute, where he also leads a research group. The most important research activities in Giske’s research group pertain to deep-characterization of molecular mechanisms of resistance, virulence, and molecular epidemiology of extensively drug-resistant enteric bacilli. Giske’s research is strongly translational, involving extensive collaboration with infectious diseases (including mycobacteriology), hematology, and intensive care. Activities in Giske’s research group include studies of management of bloodstream infections, molecular diagnostics based on next-generation sequencing, susceptibility testing of M. tuberculosis, studies of intestinal carriage of resistant bacteria, pharmacodynamics studies of combinations of antimicrobials, and next-generation sequencing as a tool for deep-characterization and susceptibility testing of bacteria. 

Giske also has extensive international collaboration, serving in the advisory board of ECDC’s European resistance surveillance, as a leader of the microbiological workpackage for the WHO surveillance project CAESAR (Eastern Europe and Central Asia), and as the chairman of the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing. A recent European analysis of publications in microbiology in Europe showed that Giske was the 26th most cited author in Europe.

Summary of the Lecture: In recent years epidemic multidrug-resistant clones of Escherichia coli and Klebsiellapneumoniae have been described in many geographical settings. Usually, these clones are responsible for disseminating worrisome resistance markers such as extended-spectrum beta-lactamases and carbapenemases. The introduction of multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was the first step to detect these clones, and moreover the introduction of whole-genome sequencing has opened for the possibility of studying these strains on a subclone level. Some of the early work done to characterize epidemic clones will be presented, followed by a gradual shift of intention to the genome level. At the genome level core genome cgMLST has become a possible technique for investigating subclones. The properties of cgMLST for defining subclones both in E. coli and K. pneumoniae will be discussed in the presentation. One such example is E. coli ST131 H30-Rx, a uropathogenic subclone which is closely associated with the CTX-M pandemic. Some aspects on the chromosomal drift and estimation of the age of the clone are discussed. Also, the properties of the cgMLST protocol of K. pneumoniae will be scrutinized with examples of expected intraclonal diversity, both in outbreaks and in non-outbreak situations. Finally, the potential role of prophages and CRISPR-regions for explaining the epidemicity of certain K. pneumoniae clones is discussed. 

The conference will be open to the general public and it will take place at Marques de Valdecilla University Hospital, Salon Tellez (Pavilion 16) at 8.15am.

Dr. Giske will be in Santander throughout the day, to exchange experiences with members of the scientific and clinical community. Furthermore, he will visit the Research Centers of our community to talk with all the interested scientists.

Those professionals who would like to meet with Dr. Giske during his stay can contact with the department at gesval1@idival.org

HLA antigen panel reactive panel calculators allow the possibility of finding a compatible donor in highly sensitized patients on waiting list. These patients spend prolonged periods of time on the compatible donor waiting list. The design of these calculators, together with the optimization of the study of the anti-HLA antibody profile with the new solid-phase assays, has allowed the implantation of live donor kidney transplantation programs in complex, incompatible and highly sensitized ABO patients, such as cross-donation program or access program for highly sensitized patients (PATHI), which coordinates the National Transplant Organization (ONT) in Spain. Due to the difference in antigenic frequencies of HLA in the different populations, the implementation of PATHI in our country forced the realization of a calculator with the HLA typing of 250 national donors.

The group of Transplantation and Autoimmunity of IDIVAL and Marques de Valdecilla University Hospital, in collaboration with the Immunology Service of the University Hospital of Albacete, recently published in Frontiers Inmunology the work of validation of the Spanish calculator (PATHI), and compare it with Eurotransplant, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and Canadian Transplant Registry (CTR) with a larger number of donors.

The model of the PATHI calculator with a small population makes it attractive so that it can be implemented in developing countries in a cost-effective way. In addition, since it is a tool promoted in the PATHI program in Spain, a reference country in the field of organ transplantation, it gives more relevance to this work.

Reference: Asensio E, López-Hoyos M, Romón Í, Ontañón J, San Segundo D. Assessment of Spanish Panel Reactive Antibody Calculator and Potential Usefulness. Front Immunol. 2017 May 11;8:540. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.00540.

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