Tag Archives: conferences

Roger Casals presents his doctoral research at scverse 2025

Posted by 1 de December de 2025

Last November, Roger Casals, PhD candidate at the Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics Lab (CBBL), travelled to Stanford University to take part in scverse 2025, one of the key gatherings for the single-cell and multi-omics community.

During the conference, Roger presented a poster with some of the latest results from his PhD. His project focuses on building gene regulatory networks from single-cell data to understand cell state transitions, a line of work that is becoming increasingly important as we try to make sense of complex biological systems.

Beyond the science, the conference gave Roger the chance to meet many members of the scverse community, discuss ideas in person, and learn from researchers developing cutting-edge tools. Topics like agentic AI and virtual cell models were especially exciting, forecasting us where the field is heading.

Roger’s participation was possible thanks to a travel grant from the conference, along with support from the Department of Biosciences (FCTE), the BI-Squared Group, and IRIS-CC.

 

The CBBL at the JBI2025

Posted by 24 de October de 2025

The CBBL was present in the XV Bioinformatics Symposium (JBI2025), that took place in Madrid on October 22nd-24th, hosted by the CNB/CSIC. The lab presented results on three research projects:

    • Topics Session #4 Single-Cell Omics. Talk by Roger Casals on “Mechanistic inference of cell state transitions via Boolean GRNs from single-cell data” Roger Casals Franch, Pau Badia-i-Mompel, Jordi Villà-Freixa, Julio Saez-Rodriguez, Jovan Tanevski, and Adrián López García de Lomana;

    • “A Bioinformatics Pipeline Reveals a Shared IκBα Interface for NF-κB and Histone Binding”, Martin Floor, Jordi Villà-Freixa, Joan Bertran and Lluís Espinosa; poster on the recent work published in Cell Reports; and
    • “Standard-of-Care Therapy Induces Phenotypic Reprogramming of Non-Malignant Oligodendrocytes in Glioblastoma“, Jing Yang, Jordi Villà-Freixa and Adrián López García de Lomana.

Nayanika Das Presents Advances in Enzyme Evolution at the SEB International Congress

Posted by 28 de June de 2025

PhD student Nayanika Das participated in the 18th International Congress of the Spanish Biophysical Society, held from June 24 to 27, 2025, at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Complutense University of Madrid. This event, organized by the Spanish Biophysical Society, brings together scientists from various disciplines and stages of their research careers to explore cutting-edge topics in the field of biophysics.

During the congress, Nayanika presented her results in poster format, entitled: “Exploring the Evolutionary Dynamics between GPX6 Orthologs and Comparing Their Catalytic Efficiency Using Empirical Valence Bond (EVB) Calculations.” Her work shows why the substitution of selenocysteine with cysteine in GPX6 significantly reduces catalytic efficiency, supporting the proposed mechanistic hypothesis, and it also extends the analysis to explore the energy landscape of cummulative mutations between Sec- and Cys- containing GPX6 proteins in nature. Thus, using a greedy algorithm, key mutations with lower activation barriers were identified that could stabilize the enzyme and offer an energetically favorable evolutionary path between homolog proteins.

Roger Casals presents his immunotherapy research at the SEBiBC congress

Posted by 19 de October de 2024

Roger Casals has participated in the first congress of the Spanish Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SEBiBC), presenting the poster entitled “Trajectory inference and transcriptional regulators of T cell response upon immunotherapy in non-melanoma skin cancer”. The congress, held at the Fira de Valencia from October 16 to 18, brought together prominent researchers in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology, consolidating itself as a success in its first edition.

In his presentation, Casals presented the results of a study that allows mapping the differentiation trajectories of T cells in the tumor microenvironment. Through a comprehensive functional analysis, the work identifies key transcription factors in the modulation of the immune response after immunotherapy in cases of non-melanoma skin cancer. These findings may be a basis for better understanding the mechanisms of response to immunotherapy, opening doors to future personalized therapies.

The work of Roger Casals has been possible thanks to the collaboration with Lara Nonell, expert in bioinformatics from the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), as well as with the support of her doctoral co-tutors, Adrián López García de Lomana from the University of Iceland and Jordi Villà-Freixa.

Roger Casals, selected to present a poster for the Award of Computing in Oncology (VHIO)

Posted by 22 de February de 2024

Roger Casals, UVIC-UCC PhD student in the Bioinformatics program and member of the CBBL, was selected to present the poster “Trajectory Inference Methods Comparison in Cancer Immunotherapy” at the first edition of the Award of Computing in Oncology, organized by the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO).

The contest was held on February 21, 2024 at the Casa Convalescència in Barcelona and was a meeting to recognize the best master’s thesis in computational science at national level.

Roger works in the analysis of “single-cell” transcriptomics data, which allows analyzing gene expression at scale individual cells, revealing crucial details about biology.

This work has been supervised by Lara Nonell i Mazelon (VHIO), Jordi Villà i Freixa (UVic-UCC / IRIS-CC) and Adrián López García de Lomana (UVic-UCC, HI), and has had the support of the “Programa Investigo AGAUR” (2023 INV-200003TG1) at as a technologist at the IRIS-CC.

Nayanika Das presents a poster at RQTC/SCQ on recent work in GPX6 evolution and activity

Posted by 1 de February de 2023

In a recent work coordinated by Sergi Castellano (UCL), and in collaboration with Elias Arnér research group (Karolinska), we have investigated the phylogeny of Glutathione Peroxydase 6 (GPX6) and evaluated the effect of Cys/Sec variants in the loss/gain of its peroxidase activity and glutathione binding. In this poster, Nayanika presents her PhD project (cosupervised by Prof. Vijay Baladhye, Savitribai Phule Pune University) on the evaluation of the enzymatic activity of the protein in relation to its evolutionary history, grounded by the recent paper, that also included our former member Martin Floor. The presentation took place during the 1st meeting on Theoretical and Computational Chemistry by the Catalan Chemistry Society. Exciting PhD project ahead!