The Generative Brain
CIBERINFEC, Centro de Investigacion Biomedica en Red de Enfermedades Infecciosas, Spain logo

CIBERINFEC, Centro de Investigacion Biomedica en Red de Enfermedades Infecciosas, Spain

CIBERINFEC is the infectious diseases thematic area of CIBER, the networked biomedical research consortium of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Spain. It was created in 2022, the last of the thirteen CIBER areas, funded through the 2021 Strategic Health Action call with NextGenerationEU money, and brings together 46 research groups and more than 500 attached researchers in four research programmes, under Scientific Director Jesus Oteo Iglesias. It matters to this atlas for one reason: the Spanish prion laboratory at CIC bioGUNE, led by Joaquin Castilla, carries CIBERINFEC and not CIBERNED as its CIBER affiliation on its papers from late 2022 onward, which makes CIBERINFEC the CIBER node behind most recent Spanish prion research output. CIBERINFEC's own public pages do not mention prions, and its group directory could not be read, so the formal place of that lab inside the network is not documented here.

Key facts

  • CIBERINFEC is a thematic area of CIBER, a public research consortium created on the initiative of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and dependent on it through the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, co-financed by FEDER and FSE.
  • It was launched in 2022 and was the last area added, completing the current consortium of thirteen thematic areas alongside the incorporation of CIBERNED in the same year.
  • It groups 46 research groups and more than 500 attached researchers across Spain, working in four research programmes: global health and emerging and re-emerging infections; antimicrobial resistance; HIV, AIDS and sexually transmitted infections; and infections in non-HIV immunocompromised patients and healthcare-associated infections.
  • Its funding at creation came through the 2021 Strategic Health Action call of ISCIII (CB 2021) using NextGenerationEU recovery funds.
  • The steering committee is the Scientific Director Jesus Oteo Iglesias, Deputy Scientific Director Antonio Oliver Palomo, two coordinators per research programme, a training programme coordinator and a manager; no prion researcher sits on it.
  • The consortium institution table, last updated 23 February 2022, lists Asociacion Centro de Investigacion Cooperativa en Biociencias, CIC bioGUNE, under the Basque Country, which is the institutional route by which the Spanish prion lab sits inside CIBERINFEC.
  • Joaquin Castilla has carried the CIBERINFEC affiliation on prion papers since at least October 2022, and Hasier Erana since at least 2024; in the records opened they are the only authors with that affiliation, and neither lists CIBERNED.
  • A Europe PMC affiliation search returns 37 hits for CIBERINFEC together with prion, Creutzfeldt or scrapie, of which around 28 are prion papers from 2022 to 2026, nearly all from the CIC bioGUNE lab.
  • The badged prion output spans human and animal disease: the first Spanish GSS A117V case, a fatal familial insomnia case series, E200K genetic CJD strain typing, two variably protease-sensitive prionopathy cases, the PMSA method for generating prions in a tube, atypical scrapie in a rodent model, BSE glycan work and chronic wasting disease in Norwegian red deer.
  • The 2026 paper on the kuru-protective G127V dominant-negative variant, the line this atlas tracks as approach-dominant-negative-gt, carries CIBERINFEC for both Erana and Castilla.
  • CIBERINFEC does not name prions or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies on its programme pages, and the CIC bioGUNE prion work is presented in press coverage as a CIC bioGUNE and CIBERINFEC collaboration with Neiker, IRTA-CReSA, IIS Bioaraba and Colorado State University, none of which are listed consortium institutions.
  • Its largest publicised project is Mepram on antimicrobial resistance, with 31 CIBERINFEC groups coordinated by Jesus Oteo, which shows where the network's centre of gravity lies.

Timeline

  1. 2006CIBER model starts with seven thematic areas, CIBERNED among them; CIBERINFEC does not yet exist.
  2. 2021Provisional award resolution of the ISCIII call that created the infectious diseases area and brought in 46 new groups (document not read as text).
  3. 2022CIBERINFEC created, completing the consortium at thirteen areas.
  4. 2022Last update of the consortium institution table that lists CIC bioGUNE as a member institution.
  5. 2022First prion paper opened here with Castilla carrying the CIBERINFEC affiliation (BSE glycan study, PLoS Pathogens).
  6. 2024PMSA method for the spontaneous generation of prions published in Nature Communications by the CIC bioGUNE and CIBERINFEC group with Neiker, IRTA-CReSA, IIS Bioaraba and Colorado State University.
  7. 2024CIBER tenth anniversary congress in Valencia; ISCIII release gives 13 areas, 513 groups and more than 6,000 researchers.
  8. 2025Two variably protease-sensitive prionopathy cases and the paper on transmission risk in genetic prion disease published with CIBERINFEC affiliations.
  9. 2026G127V dominant-negative paper published in Neurobiology of Disease with CIBERINFEC affiliations.
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