Vanguardia Science Award

A giant planet with an unusual origin

Juan Carlos Morales (Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC))

Thirty-one light years from the Earth is an impossible world, at least according to conventional theory. To date, astronomers thought that only small planets could be born next to small stars. However, a tiny star called GJ 3512 turns out to have a huge, gaseous giant as its companion. They are an extremely unusual pair, since the GJ 3512 is a red dwarf, the smallest type of star known - its mass is eight times smaller than the Sun - while its planet is at least half the size of Jupiter. It was discovered by an international team of more than 180 astronomers, led by Morales, through observations from the Carmenes spectrograph located at the Calar Alto Observatory in the province of Almeria. Theory would never have predicted its existence, and none of the conventional models fits with this disproportionate duo. The discovery has pushed the astronomy community to explore new theories beyond the entrenched ones to better understand how planets are formed.

A new strategy to counter Alzheimer

Valentín Fuster, Marta Cortés-Canteli (National Centre of Cardiovascular Research)

When Alois Alzheimer described the disease that bears his name more than a century ago, he suggested that it may be vascular in origin. However, the ensuing studies focused exclusively on the brain, where the pathological alterations take place, and Alzheimer's original idea was set aside. Nonetheless, for the past ten years the cardiologist Valentí Fuster has been researching whether or not the cardiovascular system might be involved in the disease. Joining forces with Cortés Canteli, who studies how blood clotting is altered in Alzheimer patients, he has proven in mice that an anticoagulant stops the progress of the disease. Treating ill animals with Dabigatran - a widely used drug in patients with certain kinds of cardiovascular pathologies - starting in the early phases of the disease improves brain circulation and mitigates memory loss. It also lowers the inflammation and brain alterations associated with the disease. The team is planning to begin human clinical trials with anticoagulants within the next few years.

Telomeres regulate species’ lifespan

María Blasco (Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, CNIO)

Why do some species live just a few days and others more than 100 years? According to a widely accepted theory, the life cycle of each species is associated with their reproductive strategies: for some species, a few days is enough to engender fertile offspring, while others, like humans, need more time. However, this explanation does not answer a crucial question: How does nature regulate animals’ longevity? In the quest for an answer, María Blasco and her team at the CNIO have focused on telomeres, DNA sequences located at the ends of chromosomes. In previous studies, Blasco observed that as a person ages, their telomeres become shorter. Now she has expanded the scope of her research to find out what happens not individually but at the species level. She has analysed animal telomeres from nine bird and mammal species at different ages. Her results show that the speed at which the telomeres shorten - not their initial length - reflects each species’ longevity. “We have found a universal pattern which explains species’ lifespans”, states Blasco.

New and unsuspected properties of graphene

Dmitri Efetov, Xiaobo Lu (Institute of Photonic Studies)

Efetov spent his doctorate trying to turn graphene, an exceptional material because of its two-dimensional structure, into a superconductor. After years of failed tests, he gave up and set aside this objective. However, in 2018, his former thesis director, MIT professor Pablo Jarillo, finally succeeded: when he joined two layers of graphene displaced at a precise angle of 1.1 degrees, the material turned into a superconductor. Amazed, Efetov decided to check it for himself, but he didn't stop with that test. Lu’s expertise gave rise to a much higher-quality graphene with a magical angle which astounded physicists with a range of new properties that no other material displays at the same time. The device works as a superconductor at higher than usual temperatures, which is a step towards reaching the dream of creating superconductors that can be applied to the electrical grid, and it has totally unexpected quantum properties. This breakthrough has opened up new terrain in physics, one that is still barely understood yet has the potential for a host of different applications in electronics, computing and sensors.

A virus to treat childhood cancer

Ángel Montero Carcaboso (Hospital Sant Joan de Déu)

Retinoblastoma is a kind of childhood cancer which affects the retina, the membrane of the eye where the cells that enable us to see are located. It tends to only appear in children under the age of three and is devastating in developing countries. When the means are available, chemotherapy and radiation therapy allow it to be cured without complications in most cases. However, between 20% and 30% of tumours become resistant to treatment. When this happens, the only way to prevent the cancer from invading other organs, which can be deadly, is to remove the child's eyes. In the search for an alternative, the team led by Montero Carcaboso has designed a virus that attacks the tumour cells, and they have applied it to treating retinoblastoma. In studies with animals and a preliminary clinical study, the researchers have proven that the virus is safe, since it does not affect the healthy retinal cells and it works as an anti-tumour agent. The therapy helped one of the patients keep his eye, which allowed him to try other treatments after the test.

How to read hidden brain activity

Anton Guimerà-Brunet (Microelectronic Institute of Barcelona-CNM-CSIC/ CIBER), Jose Garrido (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology / ICREA)

Part of the brain's electrical activity occurs in the form of very slow impulses which electrodes cannot detect. These low-frequency currents help modulate the signals needed to coordinate different areas of the brain, as occurs during sleep, and they are involved in pathologies like epilepsy, migraines and brain damage. Guimerà-Brunet and Garrido have found a way to detect this hidden activity. They have developed implants which contain graphene, a flexible material that is compatible with the body and highly stable, which enables the brain's electrical fields to be measured with greater sensitivity than conventional methods. When testing them in animal experiments, they detected the elusive very low-frequency activity in a way that current technology cannot, an expected finding. The team is working to transfer their devices to clinical practice, which could help better improve diagnoses of epilepsy. In parallel, they are beginning to use them as a research tool to better understand this and other diseases and develop new therapies.

The turbulent origins of the Milky Way

Carme Gallart, Tomás Ruiz Lara (Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands)

In its turbulent dawn, our galaxy absorbed a smaller galaxy known as Gaia-Enceladus. A group of astronomers led by Gallart have found a key piece in this puzzling collision, which changed the shape and composition of the Milky Way, by determining what happened. Thanks to the data from the Gaia mission, whose precision is unprecedented, the researchers have deciphered the ages and composition of more than half a million stars around the Sun, some from the early Milky Way and some from Gaia-Enceladus. The results show that stars began appearing in both galaxies at the same time, around 13.5 trillion years ago - in the era when stars were beginning to coalesce in the universe - and they continued to form at a similar pace until 10 billion years ago, when the researchers have determined that the galaxies merged. The collision of the gas from both galaxies rekindled the star formation in the Milky Way until 6 billion years ago. The analysis of the data from multiple stars is an innovation which provides a broader view of our galaxy’s history.

New neurons are born in adult brains our entire lives

María Llorens-Martín (Center for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa (CSIC-UAM))

The majority of our neurons were already in our brains before we were born. Despite this, new neurons are generated throughout our entire lives in the hippocampus region, which is crucial because of its involvement in memory and mood regulation. Llorens-Martín's research has proven this and clarified the issue after more than two decades of controversy. Until now, there was contradictory evidence as to whether new neurons were born in the human brain throughout our entire lifetime, a process called neurogenesis. Llorens-Martín and her team carefully analysed the brains of donors and proved that the technique used to preserve the tissue was erasing the signal that identifies immature neurons, which explains why other groups had never managed to detect them. Plus, they showed that neurogenesis in the hippocampus decreases with age and falls dramatically in the early stages of Alzheimer, which indicates that it may be involved in this pathology. The discovery may open the doors to researching new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies for Alzheimer.