The EU-funded NANOFACTS project helped transform Serbia’s BioSense Institute (BIOS) from a leader in agricultural sensing to a powerhouse for innovative cancer diagnostics and therapies. This project is part of the EU Mission on Cancer, which seeks to improve the lives of over 3 million people by 2030 through prevention, treatment and support for cancer patients and their families, enabling them to live longer and healthier lives.
When the systems that regulate proteins fail, the outcome can be cancer, heart disease or neurodegenerative disorders. Research by the EU-funded Nedd8Activate project offers a window into how the body clears away unwanted proteins. This knowledge could help treat protein dysregulation, and pave the way for drugs that flag disease-causing proteins for elimination.
Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed too late for treatments to work. The EU-funded EARLYDETECT project developed innovative screening tools capable of detecting the disease early.
This will help patients receive the therapies they need sooner, before the disease spreads, saving the lives of citizens in the EU and beyond.
While researchers were busy developing a handheld device to rapidly detect biomarkers to guide the therapy in lung cancer, the pandemic struck. Realising their device could be adapted to test for coronavirus, researchers refocused their work. The result is the market’s smallest portable PCR device.
Cancer is the second leading cause of mortality in EU countries after cardiovascular diseases. The EU-funded uPET project developed a new scanning technique to locate and identify those tumours which present the greatest risk. The technique has been successfully tested on 400 patients and will support more targeted therapies.
Our modern high-calorie, low-activity lifestyle is wreaking havoc on our bodies, provoking deadly diseases. The EU-funded NutrientSensingVivo project provides a better understanding of how the availability of food changes our metabolism. This knowledge offers new ways to prevent cancer, improve health and extend citizens’ life expectancy.
Millions of people suffer from brain diseases. To better understand what happens in the brains of these patients, the EU-funded RobustSynapses project focused on synapses, where many brain conditions often first develop. By identifying key things that can go wrong, the project team has opened the door to potential new targets for life-saving treatments that would benefit everyone.
Intrapartum antimicrobial prophylaxis (IAP), is a standard procedure used while delivering babies. According to EU-funded researchers, it may have important implications for infant health, increasing risks of obesity, diabetes, and antibiotics resistance. This finding opens the door to the development of new dietary strategies for minimising the effect of this very common medical procedure.
Patients who've gone through chemotherapy know that as effective as it may be, it also causes a lot of damage to otherwise healthy cells. The EU-funded NANOCARGO project has pushed a solution forward for breast cancer that would avoid such damage. This breakthrough could benefit the many thousands upon thousands of women in Europe who undergo treatment for breast cancer every year.
When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the WHO, an EU funded research project immediately stepped up to the plate. BioExcel, one of Europe's leading centres for computational biomolecular research, gave priority access to its supercomputing facilities and cutting-edge software. This will help researchers and innovators across Europe in the fight against coronavirus.
