Look at that word 'coordination', something we don't have anywhere in stroke. You're screwed as a stroke survivor until the complete stroke leadership is replaced with stroke survivors.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=159042&CultureCode=en
The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the
University of Luxembourg is coordinating an EU project for research into
new active compounds against Parkinson’s disease (PD). SysMedPD
(Systems Medicine of Mitochondrial Parkinson’s Disease) is the name of
the project that just started with the involvement of five universities
and three companies from Luxembourg, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands
and UK. The European Union is funding the researchers of this consortium
with a total of 5.9 million euros.
With this funding, they will be developing novel techniques by which
to identify and research into active compounds against PD. They will
furthermore be advancing drug candidates towards their medical
application. “Universities and biopharmaceutical companies complement
each other’s expertise ideally in SysMedPD,” says Prof. Rudi Balling,
LCSB director and coordinator of SysMedPD. “This creates optimal
conditions in which to progress a good deal further in developing
diagnoses and therapies for Parkinson’s disease.”
Parkinson’s disease is a gradually progressive disease of human nerve
tissue, resulting among other things in muscle tremors and muscle
rigidity. The mitochondria of nerve cells are often causally involved in
the onset – mitochondria being the power plants of cells, in which
biochemical reactions provide energy for cellular metabolic processes.
“We estimate that in about ten to twenty percent of all Parkinson’s
patients, their mitochondria do not function properly,” says senior LCSB
scientist Dr Ronan Fleming, who is significantly involved in the
conception and coordination of SysMedPD. “In order to better diagnose,
heal or at least effectively curb the progression of Parkinson’s
disease, we must understand this dysfunction of mitochondria in detail.”
The researchers within SysMedPD are first concentrating on such
patterns of PD in which the mitochondria are damaged by mutations in
individual genes. “Later, the results can then be carried over to
patient groups in which multiple genes and environmental factors are
involved in the onset of PD,” adds Dr Fleming.
The SysMedPD consortium will tackle this task with different
approaches: “At the LCSB, we place emphasis on developing new,
computational models by which we can better depict the processes going
on inside mitochondria,” Ronan Fleming says. Prof. Jens Schwamborn, head
of the LCSB group Development and Cell Biology, describes a
complementary approach: “We must verify any computational predictions
using experiments. Therefore, in the scope of this EU project, we will
also employ advanced cellular models, where skin samples obtained from
Parkinson’s disease patients are reprogrammed into living human nerve
cells.”
To ensure the research results obtained within SysMedPD are
translated into application as quickly as possible, the consortium also
has biopharmaceutical companies on board. Their areas of involvement are
test development for new active compounds and identification of active
compounds. “The project is organised such that the insights that we and
the other academic partners gain will complement those of the companies
involved very well,” says Prof. Rudi Balling. “With this close
connection between public and private research, we can ensure the EU
funding, firstly, is employed optimally in the interest of the PD
patients and, secondly, will generate economic stimuli. These are
important objectives of the EU that we will fulfil here.”
The SysMedPD partners:
- Germany: University of Lübeck (Prof. Christine Klein), EURICE – European Research and Project Office GmbH (Corinna Hahn)
- Ireland: Maynooth University (Dr Niall Finnerty)
- Luxembourg: University of Luxembourg (Prof. Rudi Balling, Dr Ronan Fleming, Prof. Jens Schwamborn)
- Netherlands: Leiden University (Prof. Thomas Hankemeier), Khondrion BV (Prof. Jan Smeitink), Mimetas BV (Dr Paul Vulto)
- Great Britain: University College London (Prof. Anthony Schapira)
http://wwwen.uni.lu/university/news/latest_news/lcsb_coordinates_european_project_on_parkinson_s_disease_research
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