Research

IMI Launches 9th Call for Proposals

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is launching its 9th Call for proposals, with a total budget of €135 million (€63 million of which comes from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme, and €72 million of which comes from EFPIA companies' in-kind contributions).

Action on age-related conditions
The incidence of frailty, and a loss of muscle strength, rises with age. Those affected often experience tiredness, weight loss, frequent infections, falls, and confusion, as well as difficulties with mobility. Many will need assistance to carry out simple daily tasks and activities. Although frailty is widespread, it is often under-diagnosed.

Urgent call for cardiovascular R&D revival to halt growing CVD epidemic

A resurgence in cardiovascular R&D is urgently needed to curb a new epidemic of cardiovascular diseases, according to leading cardiologists and industry representatives in the Cardiovascular Round Table (CRT). The CRT is an independent forum established by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and comprised of cardiologists and representatives of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The group's views are outlined in “Championing Cardiovascular Health Innovation in Europe", published in European Heart Journal.

Technological breakthrough paves the way for better drugs

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed the first method for directly measuring the extent to which drugs reach their targets in the cell. The method, which is described in the scientific journal Science, could make a significant contribution to the development of new, improved drug substances. Most drugs operate by binding to one or more proteins and affecting their function, which creates two common bottlenecks in the development of drugs; identifying the right target proteins and designing drug molecules able to efficiently seek out and bind to them.

Last Call for MyHealthAvatar Survey: Your Opinion Counts

MyHealthAvatar project aims to proof the concept of the digital representation of your health status. Your health status will be designed as a lifetime companion (Avatar). Your Health Avatar will facilitate the collection of, and access to, long-term health-status information. This will be extremely valuable for healthcare decisions and offer a promising approach to support health research. The Health Avatar is the digital representation of your body with the related processes in a way that will help understanding, exploration, and possibly the production of new knowledge.

The ribosome - a new target for antiprion medicines

New research results from Uppsala University, Sweden, show that the key to treating neurodegenerative prion diseases such as mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may lie in the ribosome, the protein synthesis machinery of the cell. The results were recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of prion proteins. Examples of prion diseases are scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in human. What triggers misfolding of the prion proteins to the amyloid disease form is an open question. The inadequate knowledge in the field about the factors involved in prion formation makes the discovery of effective medicines for prion diseases rather challenging.

Scientists discover new mechanism regulating the immune response

Scientists at an Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence have discovered a new mechanism regulating the immune response that can leave a person susceptible to autoimmune diseases. A fresh study by Turku Centre for Biotechnology and Aalto University in Finland is the first to report a new mechanism that regulates specification of lymphocytes, the white blood cells pivotal to immune response. By combining state-of-the art techniques, next-generation deep sequencing and computational data mining, the researchers discovered new epigenetic factors regulating lymphocyte function.

Insulin differs between ethnicities, study finds

People have differing abilities to release and react to insulin depending on ethnicity, according to a new study from researchers at Lund University in Sweden, Stanford University and Kitasato University. The results show that healthy subjects of all ethnicities were able to maintain a normal glucose level, but did so in different ways.

Research & Development

IMI Launches 9th Call for Proposals

Urgent call for cardiovascular R&D revival to halt growing CVD epidemic

Technological breakthrough paves the way for better drugs

Last Call for MyHealthAvatar Survey: Your Opinion Counts

The ribosome - a new target for antiprion medicines

Scientists discover new mechanism regulating the immune response

Insulin differs between ethnicities, study finds

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