IRB Barcelona strengthens links with Japanese science

This month, the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB), in Kobe, Japan, and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) have signed a scientific collaboration agreement for an initial period of five years. The scientific and institutional relationship established in the “Memorandum of Understanding for Scientific Collaboration” envisages, on the one hand, scientific exchange in the fields of developmental biology and regenerative medicine, and, on the other hand, an exchange programme for researchers, technical staff and students between the two centres. This initiative seeks to join efforts to further knowledge and the development of techniques in common fields of interest.

RIKEN CDB is an international centre that was set up in 2000. The centre is headed by the renowned cell biologist Masatoshi Takeichi (Japan Prize Laureate), who promotes basic experimental research into cell and developmental biology, a field to which one of the five research programmes at IRB Barcelona is devoted, with six groups. The scientific interests of the CDB and IRB Barcelona also converge in the field of stem cells and their implications in regenerative medicine. The director of IRB Barcelona, Joan J. Guinovart, explains “international relations with top-class centres such as the CDB in Japan are a strategic priority and the only means to perform cutting-edge projects in biomedicine. We firmly believe that this collaboration will be highly productive”.

Since its start-up in 2006, IRB Barcelona has established collaboration agreements with national and international research centres. Among the most important is that reached with the Barcelona SuperComputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación in September 2007, an agreement that marked the launch of the Joint Computational Biology Laboratory. This agreement is still in force and strengthened after its renewal in 2011. Furthermore, links have been forged with the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Hospital del Mar to further research into cancer metastasis.