H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) grant awarded

H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) grant awarded to a consortium of 15 European groups and SMEs.

The consortium includes Patricia Boya, Patrice Codogno, Eeva-Liisa Eskelinen, Heinz Jungbluth, Caludine Kraft, Tassula Proikas-Cezanne, Fulvio Reggiori, Anne Simonsen

The manipulation of autophagy has a vast therapeutic potential to revolutionize the way cancers, neurodegenerative disorders, inflammatory and infectious diseases are treated. Despite the promises made by pioneering medical studies, the limited applied research on autophagy has hampered the translation of fundamental knowledge into clinical grade products and improved healthcare. Applied autophagy research is essential to understand the roles of autophagy in the different physiological and pathological situations, to generate (disease) models and develop biomarkers and assays to assess its progress. The goal of the ETN Driving next generation autophagy researchers towards translation (DRIVE) is to train 15 young scientists to fill this gap. DRIVE will equip its PhD students with a unique combination of knowledge and experimental expertise that are brought together in this consortium by the different partners. The realization of their projects in applied autophagy research will benefit of an exceptional interdisciplinary platform integrating cell biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, chemistry and “omics” approaches. In addition, DRIVE ESRs will acquire competencies to exploit the results for the development of products and techniques of commercial value.