Our consortium

Coordinator:

Fundació clínic per la Recerca Biomèdica (FCRB)

Lead Scientist: Eduard Gratacós

FCRB: Department and Research Group of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Hospital Clínic Hospital Clínic has a large maternity (>4200 deliveries/y), the largest south-European transnational referral centre for Fetal Medicine, >1,600 cases and >120 fetal surgeries/year, and a large case load in gynaecologic surgery, with >2,000 endoscopies yearly. The interdisciplinary research group is accredited as excellence center (Ministry of Science) involving fixed funding annually. More than 50 staff including physicians, biologists and engineers (18 pre-docs), and 4 areas: clinical fetal, pediatrics, basic science/animal lab and advanced technologies/bioengineering. Over the last 5 years it has published >160 international papers, received 29 funded projects (11 international) and several patents. Coordinators to 2 European projects and partners to 3, the group has trained >30 fellows and presented >15 doctoral thesis over the last 5 years. Of relevance to the project is the expertise in fetal and gynaecologic surgery, processing of medical imaging and experimental models, and the interdisciplinarity of the group. Associated groups relevant to this proposal are: Center for Image Diagnosis (CDI), Technical University of Catalonia (shared PhD-students), CESCA (Supercomputation Center Catalonia) and ICFO (Photonic Sciences Institute). This allows the partner to take significant parts of experimental and clinical studies, but also to develop some technological subprojects in the premises and sending secondments for other technological steps.

Participants:

Faculty of Medicine, Research Group Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy, University of Leuven (KUL)

Lead Scientist: Jan Deprest

Faculty of Medicine, Research Group Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy, University of Leuven (KUL) is the largest university hospital in Belgium with over 1800 beds. The department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology is a typical tertiary unit and European Board and College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (EBCOG)- accredited teaching and training unit. The Department has four larger units: Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Urogynaecology, Reproductive Medicine and Gynaecologic Oncology. Of relevance to this application are the widespread use of and the long tradition in research on endoscopy in all four fields, including robotic surgery. The Department also has a research and training laboratory, i.e. the Centre for Surgical Technologies. This center has facilities for experimental surgery on large animals (6 operating tables), smaller animals and microsurgery. It has facilities for uni- and bi-axial tensiometry and in vivo elasticity measurements. All these are relevant to and will be used in this project.

Transmural Biotech (TMB)

Lead Scientist: Ferran Marqués

Transmural Biotech S.L is the first spin off created from the investigation developed in the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona and the Facultat de Medicina de la Univesitat de Barcelona.
The company was created in 2009 with the goal of developing new technological solutions for medical devices and medical diagnostic applications, both based on image analysis. Despite we are a young company, thanks to the support of excellent technological centers of big reputation we could start ambitious projects since our birth.
Although as a company this is our first participation in a European project, our individual key members have an academic/professional background and a long track record of national and international R+D+i projects, including European projects, involving intersectorial collaboration and a substantial number of patents. This experienced team is complemented with young talented and highly motivated engineers with excellent academic scores and most of them are developing their PhD work in our company in a long term relationship with the mentioned Universities settled in Barcelona.