The 17th Science Party (“Festa de la Ciència” in Catalan) took place last 7th – 9th of June in Barcelona, and researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Institute of Biomedical research from Barcelona (IIBB-CSIC) proposed a series of hands-on activities to explain PHOTOTHERAPORT project to a non-specialized public and to bring photopharmacology closer to the society.
Near to 20,000 people visited the 17th edition of the Science Party at Barcelona and had the opportunity to learn about diverse scientific fields, such as mathematics, physics and astronomy. A total of 160 activities including shows, workshops, experiments, guided tours, microtalks, games, and debates were carried out by 400 people from 140 institutions.
In this context, a group of PHOTOTHERAPORT researchers from IBEC and IIBB-CSIC performed a hands-on activity entitled “Light as a mechanism to help solving health problems: bioengineering applied to photopharmacology”. The objective was to explain the basis of photopharmacology, what is the project about and what are the objectives.
Assistants had the opportunity to see how different nanomaterials respond to infrared light shining in green, blue and red. Researchers used those nanomaterials to simulate the prototheraports developed in the project. They were fixed on the back of a small skeleton toy and represented the treatment of pain and epilepsy focused on the project. They also could see some vials with nanomaterials with different colours and see how they cause the diffraction of a laser beam.
Also, they could observe samples of mice hippocampal area of the brain under the microscope while an audio recording hippocampal brain activity was being played (these kind of audios are recorded during experiments that require electrode implantation). Finally, they also touched and observed a real size brain human maquette to learn about the different parts and its functions.
These outreach activities are an excellent way to bridge the gap between science and the general public, while also raising awareness about the importance of research in our daily lives and society as a whole.
