Page 69 - MemoriaCIBER-2017ENG

Scienti c Programmes
Liver injury mechanisms / evolution into advanced cirrhosis and transplant
Coordinator: Rafael Bañares Cañizares
The work done by Programme 1 in 2017 has gone on with its development in the strategic orientation of the CIBEREHD We should highlight the wide range of its research work covering practically all liver diseases, excluding liver cancer and viral hepatites
As part of the priority strategic lines we should stress the fostering of international relations; as oc- curred in earlier years, collaboration work with groups from other countries has been encouraged in the setting of di erent consortiums and European projects, which displays the programme’s international- isation capacity It is nevertheless a priority objective to increase the leadership of European projects in the coming years In the same fund-raising line, the groups in the programme were able to maintain their own lines for project nancing and for recruiting human resources in competitive calls, which en- ables the critical mass of the programme to be maintained
From the standpoint of cooperation between groups in the programme we should emphasise the con- siderable increase in cooperative studies performed by basic scientists; in fact, this year a “map of interactions” has been drawn up for the purpose of determining possible rm alliances with a view to sustained development of network activities with great scienti c value Similarly, the common presence of collaborative studies between basic and clinical scientists has been maintained Hence, some of the publications with greatest impact are precisely a result of these interactions The di erent cooperative strategic actions nanced by the CIBER itself also generated some major results in 2017 such as the de- velopment of a mouse model with humanised liver, whose application to the research lines of di erent groups in the programme has some great potential scope Similarly, a network has been established for research into the role of extracellular vesicles in acute and chronic liver diseases involving the capacity to be set up as a future technological platform as well as the scienti c cooperation itself
As regards scienti c results, production has been signi cant, with a large number of publications in the rst decile in this speciality, as well as the generation of clinical practice guidelines, as a nal expression of the capacity for translation of research work to the patient The researchers from the programme have furthermore taken on a good deal of their work to the technology sector, with the development of patents, licencing of some of these and development of technology-based companies With no detriment to the importance of all the scienti c results of the programme, we should stress the large number of high-quality publications connected with the impact of treatment of hepatitis C in the natural history of cirrhosis and transplants There has thus been a precise description of how the treatment of hepatitis C attenuates the degree of portal hypertension, reduces the need for liver transplants and limits the seriousness of reinfection in the graft As well as their clear scienti c impact, these results indicate the essential importance of cooperative research for translating the results of research work to society