Pain-OMICS is a multidisciplinary consortium of leading clinical, academic and SME researchers in pain and different omics technologies. Genome-wide association studies identified a number of loci associated with pain, but the level of knowledge about underlying mechanisms of different pain syndromes as well as individual variation in the disease course remains inadequate.
Prevalence of liver disease is c6% (29 million people) in the EU with mortality rates from chronic liver diseases estimated at 14.3 per 100.000 in the EU-25 in 2004. Most liver diseases have a significant inflammatory component that underpins liver damage and fibrogenesis, yet current therapies have limited effectiveness. Safe novel anti-inflammatory therapies would satisfy a large unmet need for inflammatory liver conditions such as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC).
IMMODGEL aims to identify adverse immune reactions to dental and larynx titanium implants and to develop a novel therapeutic strategy to significantly decrease the implant and medical device failure caused by these reactions via design of an innovative immunomodulatory system. The system will be designed to be fixed to an implant via an adhesive polyelectrolyte multilayer and control the immune response by autologous, phenotype modulated macrophages encapsulated in a hydrogel. The auxiliary nature of the design allows it to be adjusted to any implant, medical device or transplant.
Recently intense research identified around 4,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with human age related diseases such as metabolic disorders. Despite their highly significant association to pathology, the functional role of these genetic variants is, in most cases, yet to be elucidated. The evolutionary distance of most animal models from humans represents a major limitation for the functional validation of these SNPs.
Approximately 600-700 million people are infected by hookworm, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Hookworm infection ranks number one in terms of Years Lost from Disability from a neglected infectious disease, and among the top 3 in terms of lost Disability-Adjusted Life Years. HOOKVAC will be developing the first and only vaccine for human hookworm infection. A bivalent, low-cost vaccine candidate will be clinically tested for the first time in an African disease endemic population.
Aggression is a basic physiological trait with important roles throughout evolution, both in defence and predation. When expressed in humans in the wrong context, aggression leads to maladjustment, social impairment and crime. Despite this, knowledge about aggression aetiology is limited and current treatment strategies are insufficient.
The eSMART programme of work will demonstrate the effects of a real-time, mobile phone based, remote patient monitoring intervention on key patient outcomes and delivery of care provided to people with cancer during and after chemotherapy. Utilising the remote patient monitoring system, the Advanced Symptom Management System (ASyMS), will reduce the symptom burden experienced by patients receiving chemotherapy, improve their quality of life (QoL) during acute treatment and survivorship, and result in changes in clinical practice and improved delivery of care for patients with cancer.
The trypanosomatid diseases, leishmaniasis, Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) and Chagas disease (CD), continue to impart a heavy toll on human health. The treatments available are limited and threatened by drug resistance with few newdrugs in the pipeline. The KINDReD consortium integrates five leading academic laboratories in Europe (Portugal, United Kingdom, and Switzerland), the USA (California) and South America (Brazil) with high throughput screening (HTS) facilities equally distributed between all three major kinetoplastid parasites.
The management of cardiovascular stability in shock patients is of paramount importance in critical care. New, cutting edge knowledge is necessary to overcome the shortcomings of available therapies, in order to cope with the challenges that anesthesiologists, intensive care specialists and emergency physicians face when dealing with shock patients.
Stratified clinical treatment interventions meeting patient-specific efficacy (pharmacodynamics) while at the same time lowering the risk of emergence of drug resistance (EDR) and minimizing adverse effects are particularly needed in Hospital-acquired and Ventilator-Associated pneumonia [HAP/VAP] where morbidity, mortality and health care costs remain high.
