In recent years, our society has experienced great advances in the field of medicine, which have made it possible to create vaccines in record time to combat a pandemic, to find a drug that can achieve complete remission of some types of cancer. But the development of these therapies would not be possible without the union of different health professionals and a common goal: research to improve people's quality of life.
For patients and their families, the work that doctors do is very clear: through direct contact with patients, they diagnose diseases and apply the most appropriate treatments for each case. However, many people are unaware of the fundamental role that other health professionals play in making this possible: disciplines such as chemistry, biology, physics or even mathematics are the ones that allow us to respond to the increasingly ambitious challenges that poses the medicine of the future. Specifically, biomedicine, focused on human pathology, is the specialty that has contributed the most to improving disease diagnoses and the constant search for new medical treatments.
Research in the laboratory, which allows knowing in detail the biological basis of human pathologies thanks to the most advanced technologies, has enabled biomedical practitioners from all over the world to achieve important advances in treating diseases as serious as cancer.
A clear example is the study led by the researcher Ronie Wright, from the Department of Basic Sciences at UIC Barcelona, with which a new treatment for metastatic breast cancer is being developed, thus opening the doors to a solution that makes it possible to reduce the high percentage of tumors that generate resistance.
Biomedicine has also made it possible to improve the detection of rare diseases and contribute to the development of treatments, such as congenital dyserythropoietic anemias. Thanks to the multidisciplinary knowledge of researchers and precision technological systems, professionals such as Dr. Mayka Sánchez, head of the Bloodgenetics company, have managed to identify the mutated genes involved in the majority of patients affected by this disease and thus improve the chances diagnosis and treatment.
But biomedicine not only investigates diseases that can be fatal, such as cancer, but also allows the study of other pathologies that affect a significant part of the population and that require the use of therapies directed at specific areas of the body.
Thus, the researcher Rosalía Rodríguez, director of the degree in Biomedical Sciences at UIC Barcelona, has led a study that shows how the use of polymeric nanoparticles directed at the brain to deliver drugs capable of inhibiting the CPT1A protein, involved in lipid metabolism in neurons, could help reduce the feeling of hunger and treat obesity. According to the researcher, this study opens the possibility of using nanomedicines to direct a therapy to a specific cell type in the brain and to treat, in addition to obesity, other diseases such as glioblastoma, the most frequent and aggressive brain cancer.
Confocal microscopes, Petri dishes or pipettes and test tubes are part of the usual work environment for biomedical doctors, but the laboratory is not their only scenario. The multidisciplinary training of professionals in the biomedical field is also key for the creation of companies in the biotech sector, where there is a wide range of job opportunities.
For those professionals who are passionate about science and biology, but with entrepreneurial concerns in the business world, biomedicine offers job opportunities in cutting-edge sectors such as the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and biomedical industries. They simply have to broaden their multidisciplinary training with the specialized knowledge offered by postgraduate degrees such as the Master's Degree in Biomedical Business Management or the University Master's Degree in Experimental Biomedical Research, more focused on the laboratory and scientific career, both taught by UIC Barcelona.
These academic proposals have active professionals and experts in the sector, who provide biomedical practitioners with the knowledge and practical skills necessary to understand the rise of the new biomedical business model, keep up to date with the latest advances in clinical trials, or understand the marketing process of a drug, medical device or digital device, among others.
In this way, either through laboratory research or through the creation of start-ups in the biotech sector, biomedicine is undoubtedly showing itself as an increasingly relevant discipline within society. Its role is and will be key in the detection and diagnosis of pathologies, the development of innovative solutions that allow them to be treated, and, ultimately, will allow responses to the challenges posed by current and future medicine.
