PharmaBB aims at developing innovative research, exploring bioengineering & biotechnology, to disease prevention, health promotion and well-being. Our Group brings together different areas of expertise, contributing to achieve a higher knowledge based on the manufacturing of bioactive compounds using green technologies, biofabrication of (bio)materials and gene/drug delivery platforms towards (bio)therapeutics (against infectious, cancer or neuroprotection), medical devices, biomedical and food applications.

Within the framework of iMed, the main scientific ongoing and future research interests of PharmaBB Group, amultidisciplinary team with expertise on biological and physicochemical processes, are the promotion of translational research in the pharmaceutical and biomedical field within the scope of Emerging Technologies area, addressing diseases as infectious and cancer, or neuroprotectors, delivery and transfection agents, with efficacy, safety, ability and availability to and at the target site.

Our focus addresses the challenges associated with emerging technologies related to:

– Develop sustainable cell and enzyme-based platforms: from bioengineering, biocatalysts improvement (e.g. immobilization, high pressure), bioprocess intensification through bioreactor miniaturization to downstream processing;

– Design and implementation of innovative bioconversions towards value-added bioactive compounds (e.g. anticancer, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotector) with pharmaceutical and food applications towards disease prevention and health promotion;

– Develop LC-MS/MS tools and other analytical methods to characterize and identify synthesised bioproducts with pharmaceutical/ therapeutic relevance and to determine levels of contaminants and additives in scale-up developed drugs, biological and food samples;

– Design and develop tools and tailoring, functionalization and biocompatibility studies of biomaterials and medical devices antimicrobial properties and prevent infection

– Develop and characterization of gene/drug delivery platforms for biotechnology-derived therapeutics complement the competencies of the Group.

The beneficial health effects of the bioactive molecules and biomaterials are studied using in vitro (cell models) and in vivo tools of disorders, as inflammatory, cancer, age-related, in collaboration with other groups of iMed.