IDIBELL leads a European project on developing strategies against liver disease

Isabel Fabregat_1 (1)

IT-LIVER is a 3.3-million Euros project funded by European Commission under its FP7 Marie Curie Actions. This project will be carried out by 8 academic-research institutions and 4 industrial partners from six European countries. The coordinator of IT-LIVER is Isabel Fabregat, head of the Biological clues of the invasive and metastatic phenotype group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL).

The chronic liver diseases and their end-stages, as liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, are leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Patients with liver cirrhosis are at high risk of hepatic failure and more than 80% of hepatocellular carcinomas develop on a background of liver cirrhosis. The disease is the fifth most common cancer worldwide; accounting for at least 600,000 deaths annually and thus is a major global health problem. The main aetiologies of chronic liver diseases in industrialized countries include chronic hepatitis C infection, alcohol abuse and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. The complex multistep process of a progressive chronic liver disease is reflected in modulated intracellular signal transduction, changed cell communication and more drastically in an altered differentiation state of most cell types. Recent data indicate that the protein TGF-β (Transforming Growth Factor-beta) may play an essential role in late stages of liver carcinogenesis

There is a lack –in academia and industry alike– of internationally oriented researchers and research leaders capable of seamless and bidirectional transfer of goal-oriented scientific knowledge and technologies between the translational research and industrial capacities. This is a conditio sine qua non for effectively and efficiently combating chronic liver diseases and hepatocellular carcinoma, and alleviating their medical and socio-economic burdens.

Dr Fabregat and the IT-LIVER colleagues in Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands believe that individual groups in European Universities, Research Institutes and private Companies may excel in the components of the requisite skills spectrum. No European network exists that brings together in an integrative way the expertise to provide a comprehensive research and training programme with the goal to combat chronic liver diseases by

unravelling the molecular and cellular complexities of TGF-b responses in chronic liver diseases progression and rationally designing and discovering drugs, drug delivery systems and treatment modalities.

They therefore decided to develop a project under the European Commission’s “Initial Training Network” call of the FP7-PEOPLE Programme, to provide a multidisciplinary and intersectorial research training programme for talented young researchers, so as to prepare them for leading roles in chronic liver diseases research and drug discovery in European industry and academia.

According to Dr Fabregat, this project is a great opportunity for these European partners to establish and consolidate research collaborations in the field of liver pathologies and the strategies to combat them. “The participation of the companies will allow our consortium to focus our work towards a more translational approach. The young investigators who will be recruited will take advantage of these collaborations, receiving a training programme that will allow them to understand how basic research can be transferred to industry in order to finally benefit the patient and improve treatments for liver disease”, explains the researcher.

The coordinator of the project also highlights that this grant will offer an opportunity for IDIBELL, to position itself in Europe as a reference centre for the training of early-stage investigators.

IT-LIVER project will run from October 1st 2012, for 4 years.

Project partners:

  • Isabel Fabregat (Barcelona, Spain) – Project Coordinator
  • Gianluigi Giannelli (Bari, Italy)
  • Peter ten Dijke (Leiden, Netherlands)
  • Wolfgang Mikulits (Vienna, Austria)
  • Aristidis Moustakas (Uppsala, Sweden)
  • Steven Dooley (Heidelberg, Germany)
  • Aránzazu Sánchez (Madrid, Spain)
  • Stefano Leporatti (Lecce, Italy)
  • Javier Dotor (Pamplona, Spain)
  • Peter Winter (Frankfurt, Germany)
  • Richard Janssen (Leiden, Netherlands)

Associated partner: Hubert Heinrichs (Regensburg, Germany)

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