A summer school is organized at DUBROVNIK (Croatia) about the topic Stress, drug addiction and eating disorders with lecturers from renowned research laboratories. Registration deadline March, 15, 2009.

The aims of the school are both to provide to PhD/postdoc students a state of the art of the psychobiological basis of reward-related disorders and to promote an active debate confronting opposing views. The ultimate goal is to get students to forge a solide and objective opinion to guide future efficient researches in the field. Lectures and active discussions with highly renowned scientists will allow reaching these goals.

Any interested student (pre-docs and post-docs) are kindly invited to apply using the PENS electronic application tool and to send a copy of their CV and a simple letter of intent to Miquel-Angel Serra (miquel.serra@upf.edu) or Véronique Deroche-Gamonet (veronique.deroche@inserm.fr).

The neurobiologist from the CRG has been distinguished with this award, that the Catalan government awards every year. The National Culture Awards have fifteen categories, and that of Scientific Thinking and Culture has been awarded this year to Dierssen for her research in the field of neurobiology of Down syndrome and the chromosome 21.

The jury has highlighted the article published by Dierssen in 2007 in the Journal of Neuroscience about memory and the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity. The jury also recognises “her social compromise and her capacity to start and lead cultural initiatives in favour of the people that are affected by Down syndrome”.

The award ceremony will take place next October 25 at the Kursaal Theater in Manresa.

All the partners of the PHECOMP project met in Paris for attending the first Business meeting within the walls of the College de France located in the centre of the Saint-Germain district in Paris.

The meeting, organized by the CNRS UMR7148 unit directed by Dr. François Tronche, aimed to remind the objectives and milestones for the Intermediate Progress Report due for the middle of the year and to summarize the advancements made in the different ongoing work packages.

Each partner presented a brief overview of the results obtained and of how specific techniques have been applied to achieve the objectives. Special attention has been paid on ensuring an efficient exchange of experimental materials within partners.

The Obesity workshop organized by medimod pharmacology services GmbH gave the opportunity for the all the partners of the project and related students for debating about the Diet induced obesity (DIO) model and presenting the last results obtained within the work packages 4 and 5 related to compulsive food seeking/taking model in rodents.

The workshop was held in the picturesque Hotel/Restaurant Mayer’s Waldhorn in Mähringen and the scientific discussion was followed by a complete and instructive visit of medimod animal facilities.

Two Spanish partners from the PHECOMP project travelled to Germany (Reutlingen) for visiting the medimod pharmacology services GmbH facilities and organize their cooperation within the framework of the 5: “Transfer of the rat model of compulsive food seeking/taking to mice”

The Center Regulation Center (CRG) was represented by its principal investigator Mara Dierssen and postdoctoral fellow students Ignasi Sahun and Xavier Gallego and Panlab s.l.u. by Evelyne Celerier. The aim of this interaction was to learn from the experience of medimod in the use of the Diet induced obesity (DIO) method in rat. This knowledge will be critical for facilitating the transfer of this model to mice by the CRG laboratory and defining the technical requirements for the development of an automated system for recording animal intake and activity by Panlab s.l.u.

All the participants were kindly received by the medimod team Andrea Heyne, Urte Dahm and Christoph Kiesselbach.

The PHECOMP kick-off meeting took place in the impressive PRBB (Barcelona Biomedical Research Park) centre located some meters front of the Barceloneta beach in Barcelona (Spain) under the organization of the project principal coordinator Rafael Maldonado (Neuropharm laboratory).

The aims of the meeting were to present the structure of the project, introduce the partners, define their implications in the project, as well as the role of associates and observers, organize the schedule of the project and the work packages…and have been successfully achieved!

It represented the first concrete contact between all the partners and a good opportunity to share expertise and foment fruitful collaborations…

The PHECOMP project presented under Call FP6-2005-LIFESCIHEALTH-6 has just been granted by the European Community (#LHSM CT 2007-037669) and will involve eight different research laboratories and SMESs from France, Germany, Poland and Spain.

Reliable and predictive animal models will be fully characterised and employed to better understand the mechanisms involved in neuropsychiatric disorders related to compulsive behaviour and to design new therapeutic strategies. PHECOMP is an innovative project as it will use not only sophisticated behavioural and molecular approaches, but also parallel new neuroimaging technologies.