Huge unpolluted spaces and the feeling that everything is yet to be released. In one of the rooms, Edwin Fernández, responsible for the advanced microscopy unit, acknowledges that he feels excited “as a small child.” “We are in the golden era of microscopy,” he says. On a screen the neuron of a mouse shines thanks to a fluorescent protein. In a specimen, the transparent brain of the rodent, achieved by a clarification process in which the molecules are removed. He wants the tools he handled can be used by researchers around the world.
That is, in summary, the objective of the new Cajal Neurosciences Center (CNC), a project of the National Center for Scientific Research (CSIC) that has officially started this Monday with the intention of unraveling the mysteries of the brain. Inaugurated by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, houses a thirty laboratories endowed with cutting -edge technology and an animal, the largest in Spain and one of the largest in Europe, available to some 60 research groups – Half have already joined-, among which are international and Spanish researchers who return from abroad. In total, 700 scientists. “We are facing a milestone for Spanish science and an international reference,” Morant said.
The other great commitment of the Ministry is the National Center for Neurotecnology, the Spain Neurotch, located at the Autonomous University of Madrid, in which the Government will invest 120 million euros and is led by the director of the Center for Neurotecnology of the Columbia University in New York, Rafael Yuste, the professor of Electrical Engineering and Neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley, José Carmena, and the professor of neurology at the Faculty of Medicine of Medicine of Harvard University, Álvaro Pascual-Leone.
The CNC, in which 70 million euros have been invested, is located in the pharaonic Interdisciplinary Research Center of Alcalá (CI2A), an immense building of the University Campus of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) in disuse for a long time and even He was given to the Civil Guard. Now, a portrait of Ramón y Cajal and a collection of their neurons’s drawings receive those who enter their impressive 31,000 square meters. Some laboratories have multifotonic microscopes and superrection to study molecular structures in nanometric detail and understand the brain mechanisms in real time. Others are equipped with omic technology, a revolution in the genomic analysis of the brain that can help understand the origin of many diseases.
But not everything is so brilliant. Formed from the integration of the Cajal Institute and the International Cajal Neuroscience Center (Cinc), the CNC is born with controversy. On February 4, just two weeks ago, Juan Lerma, until then director of Cinc, resigned from his position by disagreeing with the CSIC on the destination and ambition of the organism. The researcher intended to convert the center into a world leader in the investigation of brain diseases, give autonomy and attract private capital and, in his opinion, the CSIC plans were missing ambition, by transforming it essentially into a service center. “A gold opportunity was lost,” he said.
Rosario Moratalla, responsible for the Cajal Institute, will be the one who directs the CNC. He did not want to rule on Lerma. From the Ministry of Science they have not facilitated any explanation.
It is the day of the inauguration, and the day, as Morant itself has said to the researchers present, to “see the glass half full.” For Moratalla, the center represents “a very important advance in the research capacity of our country, but also a milestone in Spanish and European neuroscience, for its interdisciplinary approach and its latest generation equipment.” It also pretends to be “a focus of attraction and retention of talent, promoting international collaboration, innovation and training of new generations of scientists.”
“Understanding the functioning of the brain is perhaps the most ambitious of human aspirations,” he said, “we want to respond to the growing demand of society against increasing neurodegenerative diseases and contributing to most people enjoying healthy aging ». In Europe, around 180 million people suffer from neuropsychiatric pathologies every year and more than one million strokes occur.
In this sense, in the center the molecular and cellular architecture of the brain will be studied to know how neurons work; The development of the nervous system during the embryonic period and its transformation throughout life, the aging of the brain, and the understanding of the neural networks involved in each of the brain actions. “The transcriptoma sequencing (all RNA molecules present in a cell) with an unprecedented spatial and cellular resolution will allow the treatment of neurological disorders and will also bring us closer to a personalized medicine,” said Moratalla. In addition, the light sheet microscope will see the observation of the entire brain and those of superresolution, the interaction of proteins at a nanometric scale.
“We know that the brain has 86,000 million neurons, but we still don’t know how they connect,” said Eloísa del Pino, president of the CSIC, who has underlined the interest of his institution in brain studies.
The neuroscientific María Victoria Sánchez Vives has made a reminder: “It is important that scientists do not become bureaucrats and have support to maximize the time spent on the multiple tasks implies the research work.”
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