Ceremony for the UB Board of Trustees and Bosch i Gimpera Foundation Awards
The twentieth edition of the University of Barcelona’s Board of Trustees Awards and the seventeenth edition of the University of Barcelona’s Board of Trustees and the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation Awards will take place on Tuesday 3 December.
The ceremony will take place at 4.00 p.m. at the Historic Building’s Aula Magna and will award the prizes that honour high-quality studies carried out by young researchers, as well as cases of giving the knowledge acquired and developed at the UB back to society.
Perception of safety in Barcelona’s parks
The José Manuel Blecua Prize, given to the best article published in a recognized journal in the field of humanities and social sciences, will go to a research that studies the daily activity in six parks in Barcelona and shows which factors contribute to a more or less high degree of perception of safety.
The study is part of Féliz Pérez’s doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Sergi Valera and Maria Teresa Anguera, lecturers at the UB’s Faculty of Psychology. The paper, published in Journal of Environmental Psyschology, included the creation of a new tool for observing behaviours in public spaces: ÈXOdES (observational examination of public spaces), which is already used in other studies.
Study of the malaria parasite
The Ramon Margalef Prize, given to the best study published in a recognized journal in the field of experimental sciences and health derived from a doctoral thesis, will be awarded to Elisabet Tintó for her research on malaria, which affects more than 200 million people. Specifically, the study has discovered how the malaria parasite defends itself against adverse host conditions, including fever.
The study, published in an article in Nature Microbiology, is part of the doctoral thesis carried out by Elisabet Tintó, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), supervised by Alfred Cortés.
A pioneering project in history teaching
Two projects will receive the Antoni Caparrós Prize, given to the best knowledge, technology, and innovation transfer project. The jury has decided to recognize a pioneering educational project with an innovative methodology for teaching history and understanding historical processes.
The project follows the history of the guitar in the 19th century as a tool to explore multiple sides of those times. This approach allows the students to delve into history from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes political, social, economic and cultural aspects.
Isidora Valentina Sáez, lecturer at the UB’s Faculty of Education, led the study, which was carried out in collaboration with the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Mexico).
Treatment for histamine intolerance
The other study that deserved the Antoni Caparrós Prize was carried out by M. Carmen Vidal Carou, professor of Nutrition and Bromatology at the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and head of the Bioactive Amines and Polyamines in Food research group.
The team, led by M. Carmen Vidal, has developed an innovative plant-based product for the complementary treatment of histamine intolerance, a disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide.
In the project, UB researchers have developed a new ingredient derived from legume sprouts, specifically freeze-dried pea sprouts, capable of degrading histamine. This product is as effective or more effective than the treatment based on porcine kidney protein extract currently in use. This can expand the dietary options available, especially for vegetarians, vegans or people with religious restrictions on the consumption of pork-based foods.
The jury awarded specific award to the project carried out by Xavier Font Castell in updating the data of the taxonomic modules of the Biodiversity Data Bank of Catalonia. It is a key instrument for environmental research and teaching and a benchmark for making decisions in environmental management. This project has been active for more than 25 years and has made it possible to centralize all the information on biodiversity in Catalonia.
Precision oncology
Reveal Genomics will win the Senén Vilaró Award for the best innovative company developed at the UB. The firm has redefined precision oncology by identifying new biomarkers and developing diagnostic tests that improve the evolution and well-being of cancer patients.
The first product of this spin-off from the UB, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, and August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS),
was the HER2DX®️ test. This diagnostic tool, aimed at patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, is designed to improve the quality of life of patients in the short and long term, and avoids unnecessary treatments and toxicities derived from certain drugs, such as cardiotoxicity.
The test provides patients and physicians with help for decision-taking based on the beneficial effect of treatment and the likelihood of relapse. The purpose of HER2DX®️ is to improve the prognosis of patients and thus directly impact their survival. In addition, this new tool meets an urgent social and economic need, such as overtreatment, and optimization of resources.