The Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), our research center, expands its scientific activity with the creation of the new Research Group on Neurological Disease Models, led by the Dr Sandra Acosta. This new team aims to develop advanced cellular models to study the mechanisms involved in diseases such as Alzheimer's and advance toward new therapeutic strategies.
With this addition, the BBRC now has with six specialized research groups addressing key areas such as risk factors, neuroimaging, fluid biomarkers, genomics, and the biology of aging.
The new group will focus on the development and application of advanced cellular models, such as brain organoids derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which allow key processes involved in neurodegeneration to be studied in the laboratory. These three-dimensional cellular models reproduce, on a small scale, the structure and function of the human brain, allowing observe in detail key processes such as neuroinflammation, accumulation of toxic proteins or cell death.This innovative approach will facilitate the identification of new therapeutic strategies and biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
«It's an honor to join the BBRC team and lead this new research group. Our goal is to use advanced cellular models to better understand the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, with the hope of identifying new therapeutic strategies.", says the Dr Acosta.
Sandra Acosta, a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Barcelona, has developed a solid international career at renowned institutions such as the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Northwestern University. Her multidisciplinary approach combines developmental biology, functional genomics, and artificial intelligence, and she has pioneered the development of new tools applied to the study of brain organoids to unravel the mechanisms underlying neurological disorders. She is currently the Serra-Húnter Professor at the Bellvitge School of Medicine (UB), leads the Functional Neurogenomics group, and collaborates with the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute.
The group that will lead the BBRC will also promote the development of a personalized medicine platform, which will integrate biological and clinical data to predict disease progression and tailor treatments to each patient. This line of work will also allow for the detection of therapeutic opportunities and the safe evaluation of new drugs in the experimental phase.
This new line adds to the work that the BBRC carries out in the study of the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's, a silent but critical period in which brain changes occur before the first symptoms appear. Detecting these changes early is key to developing preventive strategies capable of slowing or even preventing the onset of the disease.
