Cerdanyola del Vallès, 20th November 2018. The ALBA Synchrotron consists of a complex of electron accelerators in which the electrons are forced to rotate at a speed of 1 million turns per second. When they are bent, synchrotron light is emitted, allowing to visualize the atomic structure and molecular analysis of materials and study their properties obtaining information that cannot be achieved in any other way. ALBA offers synchrotron light to external users, both from the academia and from the industry, to perform outstanding studies of a very wide range of research sectors. It provides services to 1800 researchers per performing more than 500 experiments. Currently, ALBA has eight operational state-of-the art beamlines, four are under construction and it has capacity for more than twenty beamlines, in total. Five of these beamlines are focused on biomedical applications. It is in these beamlines where the services of ALBA Synchrotron are complementary to those of NANBIOSIS, especially in the field of structural / biochemical characterization.
NANBIOSIS is a distributed infrastructure for biomedical research with outsourcing equipment and expertise of excellence to design and produce biomaterials, nanomaterials and their nanoconjugates as well as their characterization from a physic-chemical, functional, toxicological and biological (preclinical validation) point of view, focused on biomedical applications such as: IVDs, medical devices, biosensors, regenerative medicine, drug delivery systems, therapeutic agents or MRI contrast agents. NANBIOSIS provides more than 700 accesses per year and services to 100 companies.
Due to this complementarity, both ICTS facilities have explored collaborations possibilities and a list of initiatives were discussed. The starting point will be to put in common all the different services that both institutions provide in order to meet the most complex needs of its users and increase the scope of the biomedical solutions given to the health sector. This new collaboration started with a presentation of ALBA and its complementarity with NANBIOSIS in the annual Conference of CIBER-BBN that took place in November 11-13 in Valladolid.
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At the left, picture during the visit of Nanbiosis group at the ALBA Synchrotron experimental hall.
