230 researchers in Bizkaia face cancer and rare diseases

In another building is “the best Nuclear Magnetic Resonance laboratory in southern Europe” thanks to a spectrometer that cost 5 million euros. A spectrometer is a kind of magnifying glass to see at the atomic level that is used, for example, to design new drugs.

A few hundred meters away, in an isolated plant, is a level 3 laboratory – the maximum is 4; They investigate the Ebola virus, for example – in which prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob are studied. These pathologies occur when proteins fold incorrectly, causing irreversible damage to the nervous system, leading to death. They have neither cure nor treatment.

Tuned proteins

Located in the Bizkaia Technology Park, the CIC Biogune is part of the Basque Research & Technology Alliance (BRTA), an alliance formed by 4 collaborative research centers (CIC BioGune, CIC nanoGune, CIC biomaGune and CIC energiGune) and 13 technology centers. Inaugurated in January 2005, its objective is “to promote the development of biotechnology in Euskadi from the most fundamental research and achieve an impact on human health,” explains its director, José María Mato.

«We investigate life from the molecular level to the level of animals, both in health and disease. Proteins can be ‘tuned’ like cars. We change its structure to change its functions. We also work with viruses and use them as a kind of bus to see how they infect cells… The objective is to obtain knowledge and apply it to technology and medicine in metabolic diseases, obesity, cancer, rare pathologies…”, adds Arkaitz Carracedo , one of the leaders of the 19 large research groups that make up a staff that exceeds 230 members. There are microbiologists, mathematicians, specialists in immunology… “All these groups have their own questions, their lines of work, but we try to create synergies, to collaborate,” he emphasizes.

Carracedo (Barakaldo, 1979) heads a group of 25 scientists whose work focuses on cancer. Specifically, in studying “the metabolism of tumor cells, what tools they use to grow, move, remain dormant and wake up later, how they feed and how they use nutrients to make other cells work for them. “Up to 50% of tumor cells are not cancerous,” he says. One of the great mysteries of this disease, which in reality are more than 200 different, is how cancer cells prevent the immune system from attacking them. Our defenses, usually very efficient, know that the tumors are there, but are somehow manipulated to leave them intact. Their main characteristic, apart from being able to deceive the immune system, is that they are immortal. Compared to a normal cell, which can divide, if it does, every 24 hours, cancer cells do so every three hours, as if in fast motion.

The Biscayan scientist studied in his doctoral thesis how THC, the main component of marijuana, is capable of killing cancer cells and leaving healthy ones intact. “That’s why its possible combination with chemotherapy is being analyzed,” he says. After spending several years in two prominent American research centers – the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard University – he returned to Euskadi in 2010. Since then he has been part of the CIC Biogune .

Laboratory 801

Its laboratory is 801. In its hallways you can see refrigerators that house all kinds of samples and very sophisticated machines. One is a thermocycler, the scientific term for a device that performs PCRs, a technique widely used by scientists outside of Covid – in fact, during the pandemic the center offered to Osakidetza to carry out this type of tests. Another is a ‘shaker’, a device that contains tubes with bacteria at a temperature of 37 degrees to grow and shakes them – hence the name – to oxygenate them. In another, they extract RNA samples faster than any technician could.

One of the most advanced devices is a fluorescence microscope. It cost 125,000 euros and not only can it perform very complex analyzes of the characteristics of cells, but it is also capable of learning thanks to artificial intelligence. It is taken care of by Amaia Ercilla, a promising biotechnologist within Carracedo’s group who in the future hopes to open her own line of research. After studying in Catalonia, she did her doctorate in Copenhagen, where she brought this technique. Her research area is genome homeostasis. This obscure terminology refers to a question of basic biology: cells copy and divide. It is what makes us grow during childhood and adolescence, and what allows our body to heal a wound. Without this process, in fact, we would not exist. But in this fundamental mechanism for life, errors end up occurring. Although cells have tools to detect and correct them, sometimes they fail and can lead to diseases such as cancer. “This microscope gives a more general idea of ​​what happens in cells,” explains Ercilla.

The future? «We will focus on disease prevention and healthy aging. It is estimated that one in three people in the Basque Country in 2050 will be over 65 years old. It is about shortening the years in which we are no longer independent. It will be as important as the fight against climate change,” concludes José María Mato.