Ferran Sanz 

Group website

Research Outline

The Integrative Biomedical Informatics (IBI) group promotes and tackles synergistic and integrative strategies for affording biomedical problems.

Ongoing research lines of the IBI group are:

  • Knowledge management and linked data in the biomedical domain

  • Natural language processing for automatic knowledge extraction from biomedical literature and electronic healthcare records

  • Health-related Real World Data (RWD) analytics

  • Systems biology and network medicine for the study of human diseases and drug safety

  • Integrative knowledge management and exploitation in drug discovery and development

 

Current Projects 

  • MedBioinformatics: Creating medically-driven integrative bioinformatics applications focused on oncology, CNS disorders and their comorbidities. EU H2020 2015-18. Ferran Sanz was the coordinator of the consortium.
  • iPIE: Development of a predictive framework for the environmental impact of drugs. EU IMI 2015-18.
  • ELIXIR-EXCELERATE: Acceleration of the implementation of Europe's life-science data infrastructure. EU H2020 2015-19.
  • EU-ToxRisk: An integrated European 'flagship' program driving mechanism-based toxicity testing and risk assessment. EU H2020 2016-21.
  • TransQST: Translational Quantitative Systems Toxicology. Development of novel computational approaches to address the mechanisms of drug safety. EU IMI2 2017-21.
  • eTRANSAFE: Development of an integrative data infrastructure and innovative computational methods and tools that aim to drastically improve the feasibility and reliability of translational safety assessment during the drug development process. EU IMI2 2017-22. Ferran Sanz is the academic coordinator of the consortium.
  • FAIRplus: Development of guidelines and tools needed to make data FAIR in pharma research. EU H2020 2019-2021.

 

Team during 2017-18

  • Laura Furlong (co-PI).
  • Postdocs: Alexia Giannoula, Emre Guney, Miquel Angel Mayer, Janet Piñeiro, Jordi Quintana, Juan Manuel Ramírez, Francesco Ronzano.
  • PhD students: Emilio Centeno, Angela Leis, Judith Perez.
  • Technicians: Josep Saüch.
  • Project manager: María Jesús Donlo.

 

Selected publications 2017-18

  • Piñero J, Furlong LI, Sanz F. In silico models in drug development: where we are. Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2018; 42: 111-21. IF 6.3.

  • Gutiérrez-Sacristán A, Bravo À, Giannoula A, Mayer MA, Sanz F, Furlong LI. comoRbidity: an R package for the systematic analysis of disease comorbidities. Bioinformatics. 2018; 34: 3228-30. IF 7.3.

  • Giannoula A, Gutierrez-Sacristán A, Bravo Á, Sanz F, Furlong LI. Identifying temporal patterns in patient disease trajectories using dynamic time warping: A population-based study. Sci Rep. 2018; 8(1):4216. IF 4.1

  • Piñero J, Bravo À, Queralt-Rosinach N, Gutiérrez-Sacristán A, Deu-Pons J, Centeno E, García-García J, Sanz F, Furlong LI. DisGeNET: a comprehensive platform integrating information on human disease-associated genes and variants. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017; 45(D1): D833-9. IF 11.6.

  • Sanz F, Pognan F, Steger-Hartmann T, Díaz C, Cases M, Pastor M, Marc P, Wichard J, Briggs K, Watson D, Kleinöder T, Yang C, Amberg A, Beaumont M, Brookes A, Brunak S, Cronin MTD, Ecker GF, Escher S, Greene N, Guzmán A, Hersey A, Jacques P, Lammens L, Mestres J, Muster W, Northeved H, Pinches M, Saiz J, Sajot N, Valencia A, van der Lei J, Vermeulen NPE, Vock E, Wolber G, Zamora I. Legacy data sharing to improve drug safety assessment: the eTOX project. Nat Rev Drug Discov, 2017; 16(12): 811-2. IF 50.2

 

Other relevant information 2017-18

Organization of Conferences:

  • 3rd European Conference on Translational Bioinformatics: Biomedical Big Data Supporting Precision Medicine. Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB). April 16-17th 2018. Organized by MedBioinformatics project.

  • ELIXIR Innovation and SME Forum: Genomics, bioinformatics and health - Public-private partnerships in open data". Organized by ELIXIR Spain and the ELIXIR Hub in collaboration with Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), BIOCAT, Bioinformatics Barcelona (BIB), Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) and the GRIB (IMIM-UPF). PRBB Auditorium, 6-7 June 2017.

Invitations as Keynote speaker:

  • The value and power of integrated data. Conference “Building a multi-disciplinary community of Translational Researchers and Bioinformaticians (BioTransR). Barcelona, 15-16/05/2017. Organizer: IMI.

  • The eTOX project: pooling legacy data to advance safety sciences. 6th Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress (PSWC). Stockholm, Sweden, 21-24/05/2017. Organizer: IMI.

  • The Perspectives of Spain: General Overview. Workshop on Digital Health. Madrid 6/11/2018. Organizer: IMI.