CONICET – UNR
Salvarezza travelled to the city of Rosario for the creation of two new research institutes
One of the institutes is going to be dedicated to Structural Biology for finding new drugs and the other one is going to focus on Agricultural Sciences.
The president of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Roberto Salvarezza, together with the Rector of the National University of Rosario (UNR), Darío Mairona, signed the letters of intent for the creation of two new institutes of double dependency in Rosario.
“These institutes are topic centres created with a multidisciplinary approach to address complex problems from different disciplines”, Salvarezza highlighted. Regarding the relationship between the CONICET and the UNR, he added: To create institutes alongside with universities means being able to complement them and achieve greater integration. To conceive the CONICET separated from universities is unthinkable”.
For his part, Maiorana affirmed that “the association between our university and the CONICET has always been good and these signatures represent recognition of technical capacity and UNR’s human resources training”.
The Rosario Research Institute for the Finding of Drugs (I+DR) will carry out multidisciplinary studies in areas such as Combinatorial Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, Structural Biology, Biophysics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Experimental Transgenic Animal Model, among others.
The I+DR will have state of the art technology such as the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer, currently the most technological potential of Argentina. This institute will also have an integrated system of high sensitivity fluorescence microscopy that will enable to obtain both confocal and living cells images for long periods of time.
This equipment is the fifth in the world and first in Latin America. There are others with the same characteristics in the USA, Germany, China and Spain. The production of this centre will provide the medical and the scientific community an innovative methodology in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
The signing for the I+DR was attended by Miguel Ángel Laborde, Director of CONICET, the UNR Secretariat of Science and Technology, Clara Eder López, and the researcher and Claudio Fernández, director of the Max Planck Laboratory and Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics of Rosario.
The Research Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Rosario (IICAR) will integrate research on the development of Physiology, Genetics, Biotechnology, Sociology, market and commercialization, and it will focus on the anticipation and solution of significant problems of our country.
In the afternoon, Salvarezza gave an open talk to all the researchers and students of the UNR Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and talked about the creation of the IICAR and the articulation policy of CONICET with the institutions of the Science and Technology System. This time, he was accompanied by the Rector of the UNR; the dean of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Guillermo Montero, and the vice dean, Teresa Mónica Qüesta.
Investment in technology
The 600MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer is digital, of high resolution and sensitivity, and it is equipped with cryoprobe technology. According to its characteristics and technological capacities, this equipment will allow developing studies of In-Cell NMR, unexplored area and of absolute vacancy in the Latin American region. Under the supervision of specialized scientific staff, this new capacity will position our national scientific system as a world benchmark on this area of work.
State of the art Minor equipment
The I+DR will have a spectrofluorometer, electronic absorption spectrophotometers, a circular dichroism spectropolarimeter, Dynamic light scattering equipment, Isothermal Titration Calorimetry equipment (ITC), Fluorescence microplate/ cuvettes with stirring and anisotropy reader device (TR-FRET and Alpha Screen), liquid chromatography and low pressure systems designed for protein purification, a analytical High Performance liquid chromatograph with UV and ELSD detectors, preparatory High Performance liquid chromatograph with UV and ELSD detectors, analytical and preparatory countercurrent liquid chromatograph with UV and ELSD detectors of high performance, multiple hoods and reaction station for parallel synthesis, as well as the necessary infrastructure for protein production isotopically enriched, its electroporation of immortalized cultured cells and the handling and maintenance of those cells, among other capacities.