Portugal and Galicia will collaborate in the development of technology for medical imaging (PET)
"The cooperation agreement was signed this Friday in the Senate Room of the University of Coimbra. It was attended by the Health Councillor of the Government of Galicia, Julio García Comesaña, and the Vice-Rector of the University of Coimbra, João Calvão da Silva."
The cooperation agreement now signed creates a network that will coordinate and significantly increase the existing capacities in the two regions in the field of positron emission tomography (PET) at all stages, from pre-clinical research to clinical use, by integrating the main actors and state-of-the-art technological elements existing in the regions in this field.
The newly created Gallaecia-PET network will thus enable addressing major technological challenges, with emphasis on the development of high-resolution PET equipment for the detection of neurological diseases associated with ageing, and in the development of new drugs. These developments are of particular interest in a region with one of the oldest populations in Europe. The network will also focus an important part of its efforts on communication and training with the aim of promoting the expansion of the network itself and the development of new research projects.
The eleven partners in the Gallaecia-PET network are research and technology centres, hospitals, universities and companies, five institutions from Portugal and six from the Spanish region of Galicia.
In Portugal: Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Particículas (LIP); Instituto de Ciências Nucleares Aplicadas à Saúde (ICNAS-Pharma); Universidade de Aveiro; Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra (IPC); Radiation Imaging Technologies Lda (RI-TE).
In Galicia: ATI Sistemas SA; Qubiotech Health Intelligence SA; Galaria Empresa Pública de Servicios Sanitarios de la Consellería de Sanidad; Fundación Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Santiago (IDIS); Centro de Investigacións en Medicina Molecular e Enfermedades Crónicas da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (CIMUS); Universidade de Vigo.
Medical imaging plays today a key role in the diagnosis, planning and monitoring of therapies, as well as in medical research. In particular, positron emission tomography (PET) allows locating and measuring in vivo physiological functions and associated pathologies. This has important applications in the diagnosis and investigation of some of the main diseases of the central nervous system - neurological (epilepsy, Alzheimer, Parkinson, Huntington), psychiatric (depression, schizophrenia), stroke and neuro-oncological diseases.
LIP is a world leader in an innovative high-resolution PET technology based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC-PET). In the HirezBrainPET project, a collaboration with ICNAS and IPC, it developed and built the prototype of a tomograph with sub-millimetre spatial resolution. A device with these characteristics can change the paradigm in the diagnosis and investigation of diseases affecting the central nervous system.
