Portfolio

This project presents a proposal based on circular economy that aims to reuse industrial by-products and transform them into extracellular vesicles. Successfully, these vesicles have proven to be excellent nanocarriers, demonstrating high efficiency, safety for human consumption, biocompatibility and bioavailability. As a highlight, these are easily editable, so they can be adapted and applied as a method of drug delivery for a range of pathologies. This, together with the low cost of obtention, makes them a good proposal for their incorporation into the healthcare market.

At the same time, this technology would also have applications in the markets of human and animal nutrition (food supplements), cosmetics and precision agriculture.

• Authors: Xavier Gallart, Aida Serra, María Mulet and José Antonio Sánchez.
• TRL: TRL 4.
• Protection: PCT/EP2022/080507 International publication: WO2023078899.
• Objective: search for funding, spin-off creation.

This proposal for peptide-based adjuvants seeks to replace the most commonly used adjuvants in vaccines intended for human consumption, since they are not as effective in stimulating CD4+ Thl and CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses, which results in a lack of efficacy in acting against intracellular infections. In addition, they have demonstrated their application in treating cancer and are especially indicated for cancers of lymphoid or myeloid origin, or for solid tumors.

• Authors: Joan Verdaguer, Marta Corral.
• TRL: TRL 3.
• Protection: PCT/EP2020/068052 International publication: WO2020260603.
• Objective: business plan design and spin-off creation.

At the end of any abdominal surgery, the technique used must close the incision with adequate compression between the two edges of the tissue to allow proper healing. However, this is difficult to determine. Because of this need identified in the surgery rooms of the Hospital Universitario Arnau de Vilanova, the experimental surgery group, together with engineers, has developed a precision instrument capable of performing dynamic measurements and determining this required suture pressure.

• Authors: Carme Mias, Rafael Villalobos.
• TRL: TRL 5.
• Protection: PCT/ES2017/070096 International publication: WO2017144756.
• Objective: search for funding, collaboration, scaling the invention.

Neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's are becoming increasingly common, especially in the elderly. These conditions have a constant impact on their daily life and quality of life. One problem to be addressed is gait, since patients often suffer falls due to the combination of walking with other activities, such as having a conversation and carrying objects, which is very limiting. The model proposed by the Health Care Research Group (GReCS) incorporates a very innovative technological modality through software, adaptable to any center, which improves adherence to treatment while improving patients' effective walking capacity. In addition, this invention is easily scalable to other pathologies, which greatly enhances the value of the proposal in the market.

• Authors: Helena Fernández, Pere Bosch, Maria Masbernat, Jordi Virgili, Jordi Martínez, Oriol Martínez, Carol Climent, Carles Tersa.
• TRL: TRL 6.
• Protection: none.
• Objective: search for funding, collaboration.

This app has been created by a doctor from the Hospital Universitario Arnau de Vilanova and contains more than 18 chapters with categorized images of different dermatological conditions. Currently, it has a great reception, especially from medical students from the University of Lleida (UdL) and from all over the world. This application is really useful to improve identification and diagnostic skills, in addition to having several self-assessment tests of what has been learned.

• Authors: Josep Manel Casanova.
• TRL: TRL 7.
• Protection: combined trademark registration.
• Objective: search for funding, selling the app.

The +Pec Proteomics group has studied a series of easily accessible proteins that vary between the different stages of Alzheimer's disease. This expands the diagnostic options through a battery of biomarkers and monitoring of the evolution and progression of the disease. In addition, these proteins have shown the ability to interact with human proteins directly related to Alzheimer's, which opens the door to therapeutic potential.

• Authors: Xavier Gallart, Aida Serra.
• TRL: TRL 3.
• Protection: patent in process.
• Objective: search for funding.

OBEGEN-DM is a tool that incorporates the role of genetic susceptibility to determine the success rate of using bariatric surgery as a treatment for the remission of type 2 diabetes. Thus, this proposal incorporates a panel of genetic biomarkers into the traditional clinical and anthropometric variables, moving ever closer to personalized medicine. This idea has an impact on the decision making of medical personnel, improving patient selection, optimizing preoperative counseling and adjusting limited healthcare resources.

• Authors: Albert Lecube.
• TRL: TRL3.
• Protection: patent in process.
• Objective: seeking funding, developing a medical device/point of care, expanding development in the prediction of remission of metabolic liver disease and sleep apneas, as well as in weight loss.

Smoking is a major risk factor and an increasing number of smokers are seeking medical assistance to quit their habit. In this context, there is a need to develop applications that help and manage large smoking cessation programs efficiently and economically. With this objective in mind, the "Systems Biology and Statistical Methods for Research" group has developed this efficient and free application, T-Control, which makes it easier for doctors to manage, assist and monitor people who want to quit smoking.

T-Control has proven to be stable and high performing, and can be used regardless of age and gender, thus having great potential in today's market. Finally, its wide implementation could reduce costs for the public health system, thus increasing the value of the application.

• Authors: Francisco Solsona, Francisco Abella, Jordi Vilaplana, Rui Alves, Ester Vilapriño Terre.
• TRL: TRL 6.
• Protection: no protection.
• Objective: search for funding, sale of the app, business collaboration to bring the app to the market.

This web server developed by the Systems Biology and Statistical Methods group seeks to address the need to decrease the time between initial and definitive diagnosis of patients with rare diseases by facilitating initial triage and reducing the burden of the entire diagnostic process. The algorithm works by giving a ranking of rare diseases from most to least likely based on the list of symptoms displayed by the patient. Because of its configuration, this server is easily deployable in any center that has access to a computer.

In addition, work is recently underway to add the genetics variant to include both common and rare genetic conditions, which further enhances the functionality of the tool.

• Authors: Rui Alves, Francisco Solsona, Ester Vilapriño Terre.
• TRL: TRL 5
• Protection: no protection
• Objective: search for funding, business collaboration to bring the app to the market.

One of the current trends in middle and higher education is to gamify learning and EpiPlay is a great example of these. It is an easy-to-use application that introduces many of the basic concepts of epidemiology, putting them in the context of a game, which the player must apply to understand the dynamics of random epidemic events that arise in populations. This application uses three classical epidemiological models, thus allowing educators to explain the different parameters that characterize epidemics and players to understand how these parameters interact in a user-friendly way.

• Authors: Rui Alves, Ester Vilapriño Terre et al.
• TRL: TRL 5.
• Protection: no protection.
• Objective: search for funding, sale of the app, business collaboration to bring the app to market.

Current systems for therapeutic thoracentesis or discontinuous pleural drainage are performed manually, consisting of a syringe and a collecting bag that can be connected to catheters. The present utility model makes it possible to perform this in aspiration with a vacuum bottle. In addition, it pursues the objective of safety and asepsis, by means of a complete and immobile sealing of the connections between the pleural catheter and the vacuum bottle, and allowing the control of the drainage flow, this being essential to avoid complications, such as leaks or air entering the pleural cavity, in a safe and comfortable way for the medical professional.

• Authors: Magdatena Torres.
• TRL: TRL4.
• Protection: Utility model ES1284006.
• Objective: Prototype development, investor search.

Gastric cancer is the fifth most frequent malignant tumor in the world and the third most lethal. It is usually diagnosed in advanced stages where the available therapeutic methods involve traditional chemotherapy, offering only a moderate benefit to patients (median survival of around 1 year).

Recently, it has been observed that immunotherapy has promising results in patients with gastric cancer, but it is not equally effective in all patients, the causes being unknown. In this context, biomarkers have been identified that allow us to select with high probability those patients with gastric cancer who will obtain a favorable clinical response to immunotherapy.

• Authors: Robert Montal
• TRL: TRL2.
• Protection: patent in preparation.
• Objective: project development, proof of concept.