The Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS) Map for 2021-2024 was approved this year in its last update by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
ICTS are facilities dedicated to cutting-edge research of the highest quality, as well as to the transmission, exchange and preservation of knowledge, technology transfer and the promotion of innovation.
The map has 29 ICTS distributed among all the territories, and includes NANBIOSIS, the Infraestructure for Production and Characterization of Nanomaterials, Biomaterials and Systems in Nanomedicine with its 26 units distributed in all the territory.
NANBIOSIS is one of the five ICTS in the area of health sciences and biotechnology. This thematic area has significantly increased its representation in the current ICTS map. Under the concept of distributed ICTS, infrastructure networks have been established in the field of imaging, nanotechnology and omics sciences. In addition, the high biological safety laboratories are also reinforced, expanding the infrastructures of this type that offer their services.
The U6 gathers several laboratories, perfectly equipped, to perform the mission of this facility: the development, characterization, and large-scale production of molecular biomaterials of therapeutic or biomedical interest, with controlled micro-, nano- and supramolecular structure.
One example of Key-Enabling-Technology (KET) available in this unit in collaboration with the
SME Nanomol Technologies (spin off of CSIC) is a simple and green one-step methodology, DELOS, based on the use of compressed fluids (CF), such as CO
2, to prepare particulate materials with precise and reproducible structural characteristics at micro-, nano- and supramolecular levels (size, shape, internal structural gradients, supramolecular organization and crystalline purity). This example shows one of the singularities of this unit is that counts with CF–based plants at different scales, from mL to L, which allow process development by QbD and process scale-up.
Recently U6 NANBIOSIS, together with the Soft Scientific and Technical Service, was accredited with the
ISO9001 certification for the standard quality control system.
Current map of ICTS
The current map incorporates four new nodes or infrastructures associated with the ICTS.
- The NASERTIC computing node in Navarra, the CIEMAT computing node in Extremadura and Madrid, and the PIC (Port d’Informació Científica) data node in Catalonia are incorporated into the ICTS Red Española de Supercomputación.
- The Center for Microanalysis of Materials is associated as a node to the new distributed ICTS of Applications Based on Accelerators.
Navarra incorporates an infrastructure to this map for the first time, an instrument that improves the management of ICTS and helps these organizations to access funding from the Ministry as well as regional and European funds, particularly the ERDF funds and the Recovery Funds and Resilience (MRR).
In this sense, the minister announced that the next call to strengthen the ICTS, scheduled for the first half of 2022, will allocate 38 million euros until 2025 to finance lines of investment associated with the construction, development, instrumentation, equipment and improvement of its scientific- techniques. The previous call, published in 2021, dedicated nearly 37 million euros to these infrastructures.
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