A European biologist has pioneered a new way of looking at biodiversity change, with the help of the European Research Council (ERC). A key result of this work has been the launch of an open-access biodiversity database, which will help researchers and conservation managers find sustainable solutions to protect wildlife.
Bacteria fight big. When they meet competitors, they are as aggressive and bloodthirsty as they come. ERC grantee Kevin Foster studies how bacteria wage war against each other. His aim is to understand what led to the evolution of such extreme competitive behaviours, and how to exploit them for our own health.
Diseases affecting the retina cause one quarter of worldwide blindness. To date, there are no treatments to restore lost retinal cells and visual function, making it urgent to find new therapeutic approaches. Can stem cells be the solution? Prof. Majlinda Lako aims at growing artificial replicas of the human retina using stem cells.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight in 2016. Of these, over 650 million were obese and therefore at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders and some forms of cancers. In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers have looked into the reasons why some people are more likely to gain weight while others manage to stay thin.
Tamoxifen, a drug used in breast cancer treatment, may be repositioned to treat pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is the 4th leading cause of death by cancer in Europe. It has a very low survival rate with less than 1 per cent of sufferers surviving for 10 or more years. Over the last 40 years the survival rate has not significantly changed and finding an effective therapy has become a pressing challenge in cancer research. A team based at Imperial College London led by Armando Del Río Hernández, has now demonstrated that a well-known drug could be effective to fight this deadly and other forms of cancer, such as liver cancer.
Cell transplantation is a promising new approach for organ regeneration in disease or after injury. To support the differentiation of hepatocytes from stem cells, European researchers developed ex vivo organoids which precisely mimic liver architecture.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths. European researchers developed novel ex vivo three-dimensional organoid cultures that replicate genetic events in CRC, as tools to test novel therapeutics.
Acetylsalicylic acid, most commonly known as aspirin, was already part of the Egyptian pharmacopeia, used also in ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages to break fevers. Taken all over the world to kill pain and reduce inflammation, today aspirin helps to prevent heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Its emerging role in preventing and treating cancer is on the rise too. But how does this drug act on your blood cells? ERC grantee Prof Valerie O’Donnell works on the answer.
A crucial discovery of how the brain functions has been made by EU-funded researchers. ERC Advanced Grant holder Prof. Oscar Marin and his team have shown that brain's 'hardware' - using the computing metaphor - is in fact tuneable and can adapt to internal and external influences. The findings could help develop new therapies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy, which affects around 50 million people globally.
Prof. Michael Schneider is a leading authority in the field of cardiac molecular biology. In 2008, he obtained an ERC grant to identify the mechanisms governing self-renewal of cardiac progenitor cells, a population of stem cells located in the heart itself that might be exploited to play a key role in regenerating this vulnerable organ in heart disease. With his team at Imperial College London, he has now identified a stem cell injection that could mend broken hearts, a discovery in the field of regenerative medicine published this week in Nature Communications.
