Pilar Domingo Calap, researcher at the Institute of Integrative and Systems Biology (I2SysBio, joint center of the Universitat de València and the CSIC).

Pilar Domingo Calap, researcher at the Institute of Integrative and Systems Biology (I2SysBio, joint center of the Universitat de València and the CSIC) teaches this Thursday at the center's headquarters the Virus Hunters workshop. This is the first act of the 3rd edition of the Amgen TransferCiència program in the Valencian Community, through which young scientists will give classes and workshops on genetics and biotechnology to 150 4th year ESO and Baccalaureate students.

The program, organized by the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (FCRI) and the biopharmaceutical company Amgen, seeks to promote scientific vocations. For the University and in upcoming workshops, Víctor Garrigós, Àngela Vidal and Alba Iglesias will participate. This past Friday, Alba Arévalo and Ángela Vidal already participated in the activity in Menorca.

Pilar Domingo will hold the workshop between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., with the aim of “showing the problem of resistant bacteria favored by the misuse of antibiotics and the use of bacteriophages, bacteria viruses, as antimicrobial therapy,” she explains. Students will learn, thanks to field work, to isolate viruses that can combat multi-resistant bacteria, currently without treatment. This activity will be carried out in person in the I2SysBio laboratories and will be attended by 1st year Baccalaureate students from IES PouClar (Ontinyent).

Pilar Domingo Calap, principal researcher of the Environmental and Biomedical Virology group at I2SysBio, who is participating for the second consecutive year, underlines the importance of the event: “We need programs like Amgen TransferCiència to convey to students the reality of scientific activity and projection of the progress that is being achieved.” The state-wide program carries out in-person genetics and biotechnology classes that are combined with practical workshops and research sessions supported by the use of experimentation kits. Students and teachers jointly carry out activities that show scientific content in a simpler way. In the Community, the scientific staff has been selected by the UV and I2SysBio and subsequently trained in science teaching by the Educational Research Group in Health Sciences of the Universitat PompeuFabra of Barcelona.

In addition to the purpose of Domingo Calap's workshop, the Valencian students will analyze gene expression and genetic manipulation, among other concepts. Also electrophoresis, that is, the technique used in laboratories that consists of separating DNA, RNA, molecules and proteins based on their size and electrical charge. Other institutes in Valencia that have confirmed their attendance at the program in the coming weeks are IES 26 Misericordia and IES Districte Marítim, with activities led by Víctor Garrigós, Àngela Vidal and Alba Iglesias, from I2SysBio.

The project

Amgen TransferCiència began as a pilot program in the 2019-2020 academic year. Currently, 30 schools are participating, of which 15 are Catalan, 5 from the Valencian Community and the same number from the Balearic Islands and Madrid.

Amgen is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development and production of biological medicines for patients with serious diseases or unmet medical needs. With the aim of improving the quality of life of patients, it focuses its efforts on cardiology, nephrology, bone health and oncohematology. Its treatments have benefited more than 20 million patients worldwide and hundreds of thousands of people in Spain, where it has been present since 1990.

The FCRI disseminates search and innovation among society to promote scientific culture, scientific-technical vocations among young people and entrepreneurship and public-private collaboration in R&D.

The board of the FCRI is made up of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the “la Caixa” Foundation, Naturgy, Endesa, IberCaja, BBVA, Esteve and Telefónica I+D. In addition to the Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio, UV-CSIC), the Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology (BIST) and the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA) collaborate. Also the Institutional Delegation of the CSIC in the Community of Madrid and the Educational Research Group in Health Sciences (GRECS) of the PompeuFabra University of Barcelona.