Zebrabiores

Os investigadores da área de Xenética na Facultade de Veterinaria do Campus Terra Laura Sánchez, Pablo Cabezas Sainz e Sabela Fernández Vila probaron nun modelo ‘in vivo’ os efectos terapéuticos do péptido ao abeiro dun proxecto internacional liderado por María Ikonomopoulou, do IMDEA, segundo recolle un artigo publicado en British Journal of Pharmacology.

Máis información:

Xornal da USC

Pancreatic cancer, specifically pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), its nowadays one of the pancreatic tumors with the worst prognostic. It represents the fourth cause of death due to cancer, with a survival rate of 7-9% within the next 5 years since the diagnostic.

One of the factors that could explain this high mortality rate in this type of cancer and the inneficiency of the therapies applied to treat it, according to the researchers, would be one specific type of cancer cells known as cancer stem cells (CSC's). These cells are plastic and they have carcinogenic properties, apart from being chemoresistant and metastatic.

Zebrabiores group from the Veterinary Faculty (USC, Lugo) has participated providing the zebrafish as an in vivo model during the last 3 years in the research published in Nature Communications addressing the study of this type of cells in collaboration with the main group of the paper leaded by Dr. Bruno Sainz Anding (Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas "Alberto Sols" CSIC-UAM, Department of Cancer Biology) - https://sainzlab.com/

Our PhD Student Pablo Cabezas gave a talk in the i3s research center in Oporto by the invitation of Jose Bessa.

The title of the talk was "Zebrafish avatars: a new ‘tiny’ weapon against cancer?" being a summary of his PhD thesis in the last 4 years, presenting results related to the improve of the xenotransplantation technique, image analysis and proof of concept of the methodology developed in the previous stages.

We would like to thank Jose Bessa for the invitation at the i3s, the possibility of giving this talk and all the explanations and information about his group and warm welcome!

Ana Quelle Regaldie did a one month stay in June in the group of Isabel Silveira: “Genetics of Cognitive dysfunction” of the “Instituto de Investigação e Inovação” (i3S) of the University of Porto.  There, she learned molecular techniques of genetic edition to apply in her studies developing new zebrafish models of human diseases.

A month ago, PhD students Álvaro Arana and Carlos Coppel made a brief two-week stay in the José Bessa group, Vertebrate Development and Regeneration, of the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação of the University of Porto (i3S). There, they learned new molecular techniques to carry out their investigations and returned full of new ideas.

Many thanks to Jose Bessa and his team, we hope to meet again soon!

Zebrabiores group attended at the 10th Annual NGS & Clinical Diagnostics Congress in Warsaw, Poland. In this congress, PhD student Carlos Coppel, PhD student Alvaro Arana, PhD student Alba Pensado, PhD student Ana Quelle, PhD student Andrés Blanco presented a poster titled "Metaanalysis of different technical approaches in zebrafish models”.

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, mutant organisms have been widely used in various areas of research in order to test the function of genes involved in different biological processes. Random mutagenesis, based on mutagens such as ENU, has been the most used method to generate mutations in zebrafish. With the emergence of directed genome editing techniques: TALEN, Zinc Finger (ZFN) and especially CRISPR-Cas9, the generation of mutants has undergone an unprecedented revolution. On the other hand, reverse genetics techniques, being morpholinos the most used in zebrafish, have been questioned by the scientific community for its off-target effects and its low phenotypic correlation with mutants. Thus, in the present study a bibliographic review has been carried out, compiling a series of data from the different mutagenesis techniques. The aim is to cross these data and to learn about the efficacy of each technique and compare it with the efficacy derived from morpholinos.

The conference was entitled The Zebrafish: A New Partner in Biomedical Research in wich Laura talked about the wonderful advantages of the zebrafish and all the benefits it has in research.

https://www.iib.uam.es/portal/

http://www.csic.es/

Last year, Pablo Cabezas got a grant from Fundación Barrié de la Maza to do a short research stay at Leiden's University (The Netherlands) in B. Ewa Snaar-Jagalska's group. This grant, together with his PhD Grant from Xunta de Galicia allows him to do a research stay for a total of six months in Leiden.

Now he is in the middle of the stay there, learning new xenotransplantation techniques and molecular cancer metabolism to apply them in our colaboration with Bruno Sainz from the UAM (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) in pancreatic cancer, and when he gets back to our laboratory, to share them with the rest of the team.

See you in a few months, Pablo!

Congratulations to Carlha Gutierrez, Monica Otero and Laura Sanchez for obtaining the first award of IDEALUGO

This award was given by El Progreso, Abanca, and the USC.

The project involves the creation of a company based on the exploitation of services created by researchers from our Group (ZebraBioRes).

The company will focus its activities on providing toxicity and efficacy assessment services for compounds, especially nanocomposites, in an innovative and recent model organism, the Zebrafish. This model has many advantages compared to other model organisms, offering our services a wonderful distinction to provide valuable information more quickly and low cost. In addition, as a short-term R & D plan, the company will offer anti-tumor efficacy trials (using xenotransplants in the zebrafish) to Oncology patients. These studies will provide patients with the possibility of knowing in a short time the most suitable antitumor for their condition.

Proffesor Laura Sanchez Piñón attended the AACR anual meeting, that took place in Orlando on 16th of April, 2016.

She has the pleasure of meeting some of the most succesful researchers in cancer field over the world, and bring to our laboratory new ideas and projects to continue our zebrafish research.

In addition, Laura attended the congress with some of our colaborators like Bruno Sáinz, Gema Moreno and Rafael López.

PhD student Carlha Gutierrez attended to the International FishMed Conference on Zebrafish Research held on 18-19 March 2016 at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw (Poland). She presented a poster entitled: Toxicity of a neutral nanoemulsion for anticancer gene therapy in a zebrafish model.