15_1_27_CIMA_BNP

For yet another year, the area Corporate & Institutional Banking of BNP Paribas has decided to donate to the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra the budget of more than 2,000 corporate gifts, equivalent to 15,000 euros. This agreement is celebrating its fifth edition and is part of the policy that the bank follows in twenty countries around the world.

The project of partnership, which involves the high school Pasteur of Paris, aims to develop drugs that reduce the damage caused by chronic infections, such as hepatitis C, as well as certain neurological disorders, goal .

When a pathogenic virus invades an organism, its cells are able to recognize the viral genome and produce molecules with antiviral and immunostimulatory effects. However, some viruses, such as hepatitis C, deactivate the cells' alarm mechanisms, which favors the persistence of the virus and the chronification of the disease.

The laboratory of Dr. Eliane Meurs, from the high school Pasteur in Paris, has identified a cellular protein activated by the hepatitis C virus that average these inhibitory functions and that also produces a negative effect in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. "With the financial aid offered by BNP Paribas, and as a continuation of the project started five years ago, we are going to develop inhibitory peptides that could interfere with this process and slow down the development of diseases associated with hepatitis C, such as fibrosis, cirrhosis or liver cancer", explains Dr. Juan José Lasarte, director of the Immunology and Immunotherapy Program of the CIMA and coordinator of the Spanish group .