The National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC) celebrates the 60th anniversary of its inauguration, this July 1st, immersed in the execution of 25 research projects for the development of vaccines, products of natural origin, new equipment and services, in order to introduce them in the period 2025-2031, for the benefit of both human and animal health.
As a result of Fidel's visionary thinking, to create a country of men of science, the institution deserved in 2024 the status of High Technology Enterprise, for its performance in research, development and closed-cycle innovation, with high value-added products of growing commercialization in the foreign market.
It has 34 national registrations and 23 abroad, corresponding to nine products inserted in 11 countries, while it has eight objects of invention and 41 patents granted in 29 countries, including Cuba.
During the last five years, its specialists published more than 160 articles in Cuban and foreign magazines, 48 of them indexed in prestigious WoS/SClmago databases.
Doctor in Biological Sciences Julio Alfonso Rubí, CNIC's general director since April 2017, told Granma that, despite a reduction of the covered staff, due to mobility to other sectors, they maintain their research and production capacity, and created their first joint venture abroad.
A second mixed entity was recently approved in Cuba, while a third is in the process of being conceived. They are focused on guaranteeing greater commercialization, in addition to securing the inputs and raw materials required to manufacture the products.
"The portfolio of lines amounts to 19, of which 17 emerged from the innovation of our scientists and technicians. We have achieved productive linkages with different national institutions, among them AzCuba, ApiCuba, the Center for Research on Protein Plants and Natural Products, Medsol Laboratories, Oriente Laboratories and the Technological University of Havana, Cujae, he said.
Alfonso Rubí informed that the first quantities of Sacha Inchi and Moringa oil in fresh, dried and powdered leaves began to be exported, while the production capacities of active ingredients for natural products were expanded and improved in the dermatological soap plant and in the plant in charge of processing soft propolis extracts.
Despite the limitations due to the impacts of the blockade and other factors, the project for a vaccine against human papilloma, the fundamental cause of cervical cancer in women, is moving forward.
He highlighted the research that found new applications for the CNIC's leading product, Ateromixol, better known as PPG, to regulate blood pressure in new patients with this chronic non-communicable disease and in the treatment of ischemic stroke. The drug proved effective in the recovery of the neurological deficit, combined with 125-milligram aspirin.
Obtained from sugar cane wax, this drug is an effective antiplatelet agent and a reducer of high blood cholesterol. In 1996 it was awarded the Gold Medal by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an award reserved in 2007 for another CNIC contribution, the Diramic equipment for rapid microbiological diagnosis of bacterial infections.
The ozone therapy equipment and water disinfection systems for domestic and industrial use, based on the use of ozone gas; the ozonized oil product Oleozon and the obtaining of hap-200 coralline hydroxyapatite, a biomaterial used as an implant to reconstruct damaged bone tissue, stand out.
At a closer stage, there are products obtained from natural sources: Prevenox, Abexol, Vasoactol and Palmex, all with favorable effects.
HISTORY TO REVIVE
As Dr. Wilfredo Torres Yribar, director of the CNIC in its initial stage, told this newspaper ten years ago, because of its multidisciplinary character, it became a new type of center, in addition to being conceived and built with the right conditions to prepare specialists and promote top-level research in natural, biomedical, technological and agricultural sciences.
Many of the young people who started out on the path of science there went on to become important figures in research or managers in the sector years later. Suffice it to mention the names of Rosa Elena Simeón Negrín, Ismael Clark, Gustavo Kourí Flores, José Luis Fernández Yero, Luis Herrera Martínez, Agustín Lage Dávila, Lidia Tablada, Mitchell Valdés Sosa and Pedro Valdés Sosa, Concepción Campa Huergo and Rafael Pérez Cristiá.
In addition to having trained more than 37,500 specialists to date, a total of 410 researchers have obtained their doctoral degree in Science, as a result of their direct relationship with the institution, which belongs to the BioCubaFarma Business Group.
Likewise, the CNIC laid the foundations for organizing the system of scientific degrees that would govern in Cuba and was the scenario in which the first thesis of Candidate to Doctor of Science was defended in our country, in 1969.
He was also a pioneer in the acquisition and use of the first scanning electron microscopes in the largest of the Antilles, as well as mass spectrometers and high-resolution magnetic nuclear resonance, the most advanced for the time.
For historians of the field, the CNIC is rightly considered the mother ship or the seed of Cuban science today, since other prominent research centers later emerged from its facilities, including the National Center for Agricultural Health, the Immunoassay Center, the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Center for Neurosciences of Cuba and the National Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals.
