About 220 researchers shared their research results at the Third Symposium on Bioengineering and Nanomedicine held on June 1-2 in Barcelona. During two intense days, leading international scientists have shared knowledge with young researchers in Catalonia, many of whom took advantage of the opportunity to establish professional contacts and to promote their work.

Parallel to the profound changes contemporary societies are undergoing, humans are developing new tools that can help them to adapt. Healthcare is not exempt from this trend. In Spain, the aging population and increased life expectancy, among many other factors, are raising a number of challenges that will have to be confronted in order to avoid a collapse of the health system. Identifying the main problems of the current healthcare model and some key reforms to strengthen it were the focus of a round table debate that took place in the medieval chapel of Santa Àgueda, in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, on May 25.

The second day of the conference “Towards Personalized Cancer Medicine” held this week at the CosmoCaixa museum in Barcelona, focused on cancer genomics and the identification of biomarkers for use in the prognosis and treatment of the disease. The conference program included 17 plenary presentations. Only have way over, the conference has already met the expectations of the attendees who have expressed their more than favorably reviews about the quality of the lectures and the organization of the program.

On Wednesday the 17th of March in the Barbier-Mueller Museum of the Pre-Columbian Art in Barcelona, a talk entitled "The evolution of the capacity for art" was held by Camilo Jose Cela Conde, professor of Human Evolution of the University of the Balearic Islands, with the participation of the art critic Joan Ripoll, the artists Eusebi Vila Delclós and Trinidad Sotos, and the researcher at the Center for Genomic Regulation, Mara Dierssen. The act was done in the framework of the World Brain Week, held in Barcelona from the 15th to the 22nd of March.