As Europe’s population grows older, the burden of age-related diseases is rising. A promising avenue of research is understanding how protein dysfunction can drive cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. The EU-funded PhasAGE project created a research centre focused on protein phase separation, growing Europe’s research capacity to prevent and treat age-related diseases.
While the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease continues to grow at an alarming rate, advances in treatment and prevention have stalled. The EU-industry funded ADAPTED project worked to better understand how the presence of a specific gene significantly increases the risk of disease. This research could open the door to new treatment for patients.
Probiotics are used by many citizens as a means to preserve or restore the 'good' bacteria in the gut. The EU-funded MetaBiota project has gone one step further by demonstrating how these beneficial bacteria - the microbiota - also have a positive impact on helping stroke patients make a better recovery. This could open the door to a number of new and exciting treatment options.
With life expectancy on the rise, more and more people are at risk of developing age-related eye diseases that could cause blindness. The key to treating and managing such diseases is to understand the risk factors involved. To help, one EU-funded project has developed tools that predict not only how likely a person is to develop eye diseases but also what can be done to lower this risk.
European researchers have been building the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), a full computer model of the body. Through this process, an EU-funded project focused on improving cardiovascular care, and several key results are now being implemented by industry. The ultimate aim of all this is to turn basic science into real medical practices that will benefit patients and improve care standards.
Your father's exercise routine may have made you smarter according to EU-funded researchers studying how lifestyle choices affect brain function and memory. The findings could lead to new treatments for neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
An EU-funded project carried out an 'advance care planning' trial on patients with late-stage cancer in a bid to improve their welfare and boost their involvement in care-giving decision-making.
An EU-funded project has linked scientists with experts in industry to forge partnerships aimed at creating new products to improve the lives of people with dementia. The research is creating tools to help remind people with dementia to undertake the tasks critical to their daily lives.
EU-funded researchers have developed innovative genetic reprogramming techniques to replace and repair brain cells, opening up novel therapeutic pathways to combat debilitating disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease.
Across the EU, many people are worried about the novel coronavirus and its rapid spread. The EU project PREPARE, which began in 2014, is responding to COVID-19 by rapidly assessing Europe’s preparedness and deploying vital clinical research.
