EMMA partner



CNB-CSIC - Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, Madrid, Spain

CNB-CSIC Logo

Campus de Cantoblanco
C/ Darwin, 3
28049 Madrid
Spain

 

CNB area The Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB) is a Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) research centre created in 1992 with the aim of translating fundamental biological knowledge into tools and strategies applicable to human health, agriculture and environment, including the generation and analysis of genetically modified mice as experimental animal models of human diseases. CNB annual budget is 30 million Euros with 320 projects executed in 2007, including 41 from the EC and 30 from biotech companies and private foundations, that resulted in 145 publications with a mean IF of 6,5. The CNB animal house (2000 m²/5000 cages/25000 mice) is divided into four areas (SPF, Conventional, Quaranteen and Inoculated/P3) and currently holds 300 different mouse strains. CNB scientific facilities include a Transgenic Unit, a Mouse Embryo and Sperm Cryopreservation and a Histology Unit, both directed by Lluis Montoliu.

CNB will host the Spanish EMMA node, coordinated by Lluis Montoliu. Lluis Montoliu is the National coordinator of the SEBBM Group on 'Transgenesis in Mammals' and President of the International Society for Transgenic Technologies. Lluis Montoliu has been involved in scientific projects involving animal transgenesis since 1991 and has been cryopreserving mouse embryos since 1993. The CNB Mouse Cryopreservation Unit has been in operation since 1999, with Julia Fernandez as the responsible technician, supervised by Lluis Montoliu. More than 80 mouse strains have been cryopreserved, mostly at 8-cell embryo stage, sperm also. Julia Fernandez has been trained for mouse embryo and sperm cryopreservation techniques at the Jackson Laboratory, at the MRC-MGU Harwell (UK) and at the EMBL Transgenic Unit and she has become instructor in the annual cryopreservation course organised by CIEMAT since 2001. The cryopreservation facility at CNB has become a reference in the country and thus, frequently teaches technicians from other Spanish research centres willing to establish these techniques in their institutes.