Andaluca-Biotec Salud Network to Promote Harmonization of Biodata and Human Disease Biomodels
The Andaluca-Biotec Salud network is set to promote the harmonization of biodata, biomodels of human diseases, and analysis platforms at the single-cell level. This initiative aims to advance precision medicine, focusing on the individual to enable more efficient diagnosis and treatment.
With almost one and a half million euros allocated for its development, Andaluca-Biotec Salud has received co-financing from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The funds have been provided through the European Union NextGenerationEU and by the Minister of University, Research, and Innovation of the Junta de Andaluca. Several other autonomous communities, including Catalonia, the Basque Country, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón, and Galicia, are also working on similar plans at the national level.
The scientific coordinator of Andaluca-Biotec Salud, Mario Delgado-Mora, emphasized the role of the initiative’s CSIC centers. He highlighted their participation as positioning the CSIC as a key institution in designing and developing biotechnological platforms for health applications, as well as fundraising through instruments such as Complementary Plans.
Delgado-Mora stated that the project sets an ambitious goal to make Andaluca and its residents the first to have the best tools for clinical diagnosis and biomedical research. The overall objective is to democratize cutting-edge technology and ensure open and quality science in biotechnology applied to health at both the regional and national levels.
As part of this effort, Andaluca-Biotec Salud will implement new transversal, pioneering, and unique biotechnological platforms over the next year and a half to focus on developing tools for diagnosis and advanced or targeted therapies in personalized medicine. The initiative aims to provide equal opportunity access to various research, health, and educational centers, as well as biotechnology companies, to integrate these tools into their research and decision-making processes for diagnosing, prognosing, and treating diseases.
Coordinated by the IPBLN-CSIC, Andaluca-Biotec Salud will be developed through three lines of action that integrate seven R&D&I projects. The initiative will involve more than 40 researchers and technologists and will be executed at prestigious research institutes and universities in the field of biotechnology and biomedicine in Andalusia.
The first line of action is a multidisciplinary project led by Dr. Joaquín Dopazo-Blzquez of the Progreso y Salud Foundation (FPS). This project aims to harmonize and integrate biodata bases of different nature, develop a discovery system for genomic, imaging, and clinical data, and create the necessary tools to enable their use.
The second line of action, led by Dr. Miguel Ángel Moreno-Mateos at the Andalusian Center for Development Biology (CABD-CSIC), focuses on forming a network in biomodels at the Andalusian level and generating proofs of principle for the development of biomodels of human diseases of health interest through the interaction and use of this network of research groups.
The most ambitious line of action addresses the generation, optimization, and consolidation of several biotechnological platforms focused on cutting-edge nuclear analyzes at the scale of the individual cell. This includes the development of unique single-cell spatial transcriptomics platforms, as well as platforms specialized in single-cell transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenomic analysis.
The initiative, spearheaded by doctors and researchers from various CSIC centers, aims to revolutionize precision medicine by revealing the heterogeneity of tissue at a genomic and molecular scale. This will aid in defining new pathological subtypes with differential diagnoses and prognoses, as well as their response to specific treatments.