International Stem Cells Agreement signed
This is a framework cooperation agreement between the Ministry of Health, the biotechnology company GiStem Research S.L. based in Gijón Asturias and the Economic Federation.
In this regard, the Minister of Health, Dr. Luis Medina Ruiz, said: “We are in the process of signing an international agreement, something very important that we have been working on for some time with the Economic Federation and the Spanish research centre GiStem Research, represented by Dr. Luis Costa Pérez, a Tucuman member of the centre who was present online.
Following this line, Medina Ruiz explained that this is research with stem cells and molecules called “secretomes”, which are a set of molecules, mainly proteins, that a cell secretes or releases from its surface. These come out of stem cells that have to do with a change in the paradigm of treatments for many diseases.
“It is very likely that we are facing the discovery of products or molecules that can cure diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or many other diseases. The Ministry of Health will be part of this project and we are facing a very important advance in the first levels of research in Spain,” he said.
He added: “We are very excited because thanks to all this we can treat those diseases where for example there are permanent retinal lesions, or pathologies such as type 1 diabetes, where there are no certain cells in the pancreas, which is why the person requires insulin for life.
From there, specific framework agreements will be signed with advanced protocols together with the ethics committee that will authorise work with selected patients and a team of trained researchers.
‘I want to thank the Economic Association, since they were the ones who brought Dr. Costa Pérez and are also financing this great project, we are also grateful for the confidence in the Ministry of Health, since by instruction of the Governor of the Province, Osvaldo Jaldo, we have to assist patients, but also manage the elements, technology, human resources, and research on many diseases that can change their evolution with proper intervention,’ he closed.
For his part, the president of the FET, Héctor Viñuales, explained that last week they signed a very important framework agreement with the Ministry of Education and today with the Ministry of Public Health, headed by Dr. Luis Medina Ruiz, with the idea of signing a cooperation agreement with a Spanish company called GiStem Research.
‘It is a work that will be carried out between these two institutions, and the connection of our foundation will be applied to everything that has to do with innovative work in uterine stem cells applied to progress in diseases such as cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s and all these pathologies,’ said Viñuales.
Finally, the president emphasised that a whole sector of the Economic Federation is working on this and empowered the public-private articulation, in pursuit of people’s health.
