Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, head of the Cell Biology Laboratory at UPF's Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS), ICREA researcher and member of the CIBERNED network, has won the "La Vanguardia Science" prize, organized by the newspaper La Vanguardia, with the collaboration of the Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation. The award aims to recognize and showcase the research of excellence conducted in Spain. 

For the first time since the first edition of the prize 5 years ago, the expert jury (consisting of scientists) and the general public, through online voting (around 4,500), have agreed as to what they consider have been the two best research projects of the year 2014. Pura Muñoz-Cánoves received 61.2% of readers' votes (second place 13.2%) and 25.6% of the Scientific Committee's (second place 14.6%) The research has also been the most read on the website of La Vanguardia and the most shared on Facebook. In addition, UPF is the only institution that has had finalists at all five editions of the prize held so far. 

One of the most recent and acknowledged contributions of the group is the discovery of a key mechanism to understand muscle ageing, published in Nature in 2014. The knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that take place in animal models has enabled making great progress in the study of human diseases. In this case, the goal is to understand those that produce muscle degeneration (such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy), which can become highly debilitating. Moreover, this field of research allows a better understanding of the mechanisms that regulate the ageing of muscles produced by ageing itself. La Vanguardia has not been the only one to recognize the importance of this research, as one month ago this same study was also granted the City of Barcelona Award.

Video explaining the research on muscle ageing