- Coinciding with World Health Day and World Health Week, the ‘BioMed & Tech Talks’ will be held in Granada from April 8 to 11, 2024 to give visibility to advances in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
- “Natural products are a source of inspiration for the design of new drugs, and the sea is the next medium to be explored,” says Dr. Olga Genilloud, scientific director of the MEDINA Foundation.
- Most pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the search for new antibiotics for more than 20 years, says Dr. Genilloud, who works with more than 190,000 strains of microorganisms and has a library of 200,000 natural products to discover new drugs.
Granada, 2nd April 2024
“Natural products are present in more than 50% of the drugs we use today,” says Olga Genilloud, scientific director of the MEDINA Foundation (Innovative Medicines in Andalusia), for whom natural products “are an excellent starting point for the design of new compounds“.
This was announced by the director of this leading research center in the discovery of drugs based on natural products of microbial origin. The research and use of products of natural origin as a source of inspiration for new drugs will be one of the topics to be developed at the new event ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, which will be held from April 8 to 11 at the Granada Health Technology Park, coinciding with World Health Day and World Health Week.
BioMed&Tech Talks’, organized by Medina Media Events, is supported by the Progreso y Salud Foundation (FPS), of the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs of the Andalusian Regional Government, and representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO), Farmaindustria, the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), the Spanish Association of Biocompanies (ASEBIO) and health communicators associations, such as ANIS, AEC2 and Comunicabiotec, have already confirmed their participation.
Natural products present in more than 50% of pharmaceuticals
Dr. Olga Genilloud, who will participate in the “BioMed & Tech Talks” in Granada, leads a multidisciplinary team that works with more than 190,000 strains of bacteria and fungi and also has a library of 200,000 natural products to discover new drugs. According to the director of the MEDINA Foundation, “natural products are an excellent starting point for the design of new compounds” and today more than 50% of the drugs we use are derived from or inspired by natural products, such as antibiotics and antifungals, immunosuppressants, antitumor drugs or drugs indicated for cardiovascular diseases, among others.
In her presentation, Dr. Olga Genilloud will address important issues such as “antimicrobial resistance which, together with the lack of new antibiotics, is a global health problem”. AMR is today one of the leading causes of death globally and among cancer patients it is listed as the second leading cause of death.
For the scientific director of the MEDINA Foundation, it is worrying that there have only been six new classes of antibiotics since 2000, which means that “the catalog of compounds in the clinic and the agents approved today are insufficient to address the future control of the increase in microbial resistance”.
The sea as a great source of resources
The MEDINA Foundation develops research programs on new drugs and biomarkers in strategic therapeutic areas, such as resistant infectious and parasitic diseases, oncology and neurodegeneration, with global collaborations in Europe, America and Asia. In the last 15 years there have been more than 180 collaborations with the aim of valorizing natural products produced by microorganisms with different types of applications.
For Dr. Olga Genilloud, the lack of new antibiotics “is a problem that we have to address and solve collectively”, because, in short, it is “a life insurance policy to have a molecule that can solve an unwanted infection in the future”.
This is where Dr. Olga Genilloud and her team’s “interest in exploring an environment such as the sea” comes in, since the marine environment becomes a great source of resources for the discovery of new drugs. At the moment, the drugs developed by natural products of marine origin “are a very small part” compared to those of terrestrial origin, but taking into account the immensity that the sea represents in the whole of the Earth, it is possible to speak of an enormous availability of resources with which to create new drugs.
Innovative format for a high-level event
The Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio, located in the Granada Health Technology Park, will host the first edition of ‘BioMed &Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, a new independent, transversal, international and multidisciplinary event that from April 8 to 11, 2024, coinciding with the World Health Day and Week, will give visibility to innovative projects in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
The agenda will include two face-to-face sessions (Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 April) and two virtual sessions (10 and 11). This format allows speakers and experts who cannot travel to Granada to share their progress and messages with the entire community, which raises the academic level of this event to the highest level.
All BM&TTalks presentations can be followed through ‘The Observatory’, the digital platform of Medina Media Events, where all interventions will also be available 24/365 for on-demand consumption, like Netflix, but free of charge.
The first edition of ‘BioMed & Tech Talks’ is organized by Medina Media Events in collaboration with the Fundación Progreso y Salud of the Consejería de Salud y Consumo de la Junta de Andalucía and is supported by GSK, Nokia, El Observatorio and the Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio. Also collaborating are Andalucía TRADE, ASEBIO, Wellness Forum and Granada Convention Bureau, among others.
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