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The Complementary Plan for Biotechnology applied to Health will accelerate the discovery of new drugs

On March 27, the call for expressions of interest “SCREENTECH” will be opened within the Complementary Plan for Biotechnology in Catalonia, coordinated by IBEC. This initiative will prioritise the development of new projects on IRB Barcelona’s drug screening and drug-target interaction analysis platform. Both IBEC and IRB Barcelona are part of the BIST Community.

The objective of Action Line 3 (LA3) of the Complementary Plan for Biotechnology applied to Health – coordinated by IBEC– is to develop an integrated high-throughput screening system through IRB Barcelona’s drug screening and drug-target interaction analysis platform. This system aims to support research projects that will allow the identification and optimization of new compounds that can be used in general and precision medicine, as well as in the repositioning of drugs for new applications.

At the regional level, Catalonia will count on the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) node to carry out high-throughput screenings and drug-target interaction studies, and to this end, a reinforcement on its drug screening platform is planned. In this way, a series of actions will be carried out to increase its processing and data analysis capacity. In addition, it will be equipped with cutting-edge technologies in biological monitoring and highly qualified personnel will be hired. Thanks to this strengthening, this platform will promote unique translational services in an affordable, collaborative, and open framework to the entire scientific community.

In this context, on March 27, the SCREENTECH programme opened, with a call for expressions of interest (EdI) for high-performance screenings using this platform.

This call is funded by the Complementary Plan for Biotechnology applied to Health, through Next Generation EU funds (C17. I1), and is aimed at non-profit Catalan agents, public or private, who carry out scientific and technical research activities focused on personalized medicine.

A total budget of € 452,000 will be assigned, with a maximum amount of € 56,500 per selected EdI, until the budget is exhausted.

The deadline for submission of the EdI will be from March 27 to May 2, 2023 at 23:59 (Spanish peninsular time).

More details here and on the IBEC website.