This section refers to the associated research groups, laboratories and services that collaborate with the ITB in emerging areas and programmes, or that carry out specific innovation and biomedical technology transfer activities, particularly those at the ULL or that are part of the Canary Islands Health Service but also, other those at institutions.
Institute of Biomedical Technologies
Biomedical Innovation and Services Platforms
SOMA is a service attached to the Institute of Biomedical Technologies (ITB) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), which is developed within the framework of the Agustín de Betancourt call, financed by the Tenerife Island Council, TF Innova, FDCAN and MEDI. The objective of this service is to provide researchers from the ITB, the ULL and any public or private organization, the opportunity to develop their own cell and animal models, that allow them to advance more efficiently in their research. Likewise, SOMA gives the opportunity to cryopreserve these models to ensure their maintenance over time.
Proteomics and other -omics quantitative analysis has become extremely complex and is a basic tool in life sciences. In response to the increasing demand, the ITB-Proteomics Service (ProITB) created the -omics data analysis Service which main goal is making complex data simpler to interpret by the researchers. Data analysis is performed using free software (MaxQuant and Perseus) which integrate statistical analysis and other capabilities as exporting data to other online databases (String, Panther) and creating plots ready to publish.
Despite its focus on aquaculture nutrition, this group has been collaborating closely with groups at the ITB for a long time, studying physiological aspects of nutrition and particularly, the role of lipids in human biology and pathology. Its role in this platform is to establish lines of collaboration with other programmes, analysing the role of human nutrition in health and disease, as well as assisting in lipidomics studies.
Research carried out by this group is integrated within The Canary Islands Health Assessment Service, which focuses particularly on safety and cost-benefit assessment of new health technologies, telemedicine applications and shared decision making, as well as their economic, organisational, ethical and social impact.
The Canary Islands Foundation for advances in biomedicine and biotechnology
Setting up Bioavance in 2006 was the result of a collaboration between the ULL and the Regional Government of Tenerife to promote biomedical and biotechnological research. At that time, the ITB Institute at the ULL and Bioavance Foundation by the Regional Government of Tenerife were created simultaneously to explicitly support the establishment of Institute. The foundation is governed by a board presided by the head of the Regional Government of Tenerife and its vice-president is the vice-chancellor of the ULL. The other members of the board currently include the president of the ULL’s Social Council and representatives of other ULL research institutes. From the outset, the role of this Foundation, funded by the Regional Government of Tenerife, has been to leverage the development of biomedical and biotechnological research in Tenerife and The Canary Islands, promoting partnerships between different research entities (institutes and teaching hospitals, among others). In this context, the Foundation helps manage privately funded biomedical research projects, it offers support to applications for public funding from both national and international calls, and to assist in the management of these projects. It promotes biomedical and biotechnology innovation and transfer, it helps disseminate the groups’ research activities, as well as assisting in the organisation of events related to these activities. An example of the Foundation’s involvement in the ITB’s include the successful application and management of projects ADE-210/00046 (Construction and development of the Research Centre of The Canary Islands: Institute of Health Carlos III, 2011–2018, 8,030,000 €) and FP7-REGPOT-2012-2013-1 (Improving Biomedical Research and Innovation in the Canary Islands, IMBRAIN; European Commission, 2012-2016, 4,158,874 €).