Projects

Europe still sees a quarter of the world's cancer cases each year, making cancer the second leading cause of death and illness in the region after cardiovascular diseases. Unless we take decisive action, lives lost to cancer in the EU are set to increase by more than 24% by 2035, making it the leading cause of death in the EU. Cross-border collaboration can address this challenge by combining data from various modalities and sources, extracting meaningful insights to deepen our understanding of cancer. However, ethical, legal, and national regulations, along with data access processes, including differing interpretations of the EU GDPR create significant hurdles. Technical interoperability issues across European cancer RIs, and patients' and citizens' rights to control who uses their personal information and for what purposes further complicate data sharing. The project will provide European researchers, SMEs, and innovators with a decentralized collaborative network, “UNCAN-CONNECT,” for cancer research. It consists of both technical components, a governance, compliance, and operational framework based on the UNCAN blueprint, with the goal of operationalizing it. The objective is to facilitate access to cancer data, promote open science, and revolutionize cancer research and treatment by co-creating an open-source federation of federations platform. It will be developed using specific use cases focused on six major cancer types: Paediatric, Lymphoid malignancies, Pancreatic cancer, Ovarian, Lung, and Prostate cancers and active collaboration with a diverse range of stakeholders,including researchers, SMEs, industrial end users, and citizens. It will build on existing European RIs such as BBMRI as well as initiatives like EOSC4CANCER, CanSERV, EUCAIM, to enable seamless storage, access, sharing, and processing of data across Member States and associated countries. This approach will foster interoperability and collaboration, accelerating progress in cancer research. This action is part of the Cancer Mission clusters of projects 'Understanding' established in 2022.

The research infrastructure on experimental studies and applications of cellular processes aims at gathering national know-how in the field of cell and molecular biology, and aims at setting up an instrumental capability to develop competence and services in the fields of microbial and mammalian cell processes and their applications. The infrastructure will be built up jointly by the University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University, Estonian University of Life Sciences and the Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics. The vision is to become a know-how and service centre to partner health, biotechnology and environment-focused public sector organisations, medical institutions, biotechnology and pharmacological companies. The focus will be on acquiring and setting up relevant instrumental complexes, development and offering of services, popularisation and dissemination of the field in order to ensure sustainability of researchers and future activities.

The nervous system consists of multiple cell types with distinct physiological specializations and gene expression patterns. In tissue, these cells form a complex, intertwined network that is subject to constant interaction between different cell types. This complexity poses a challenge for researchers in both separating cell types for analysis as well as studying interactions and information transfer between cells. In this application, we propose a molecular neuroscience study addressing both aspects. First, we are developing proteomics methods to allow analysis of newly synthesized proteins on a cell type-specific basis. Second, we shall use novel genetic tools for cell type-specific stimulation and gene expression analysis in primary co-cultures of neurons and astroglial cells. We shall use this system to probe gene expression signatures in neuron-astrocyte communication and determine the transmitters that form the basis of this communication.

Astrocytes comprise one of the main cell types in the central nervous system (CNS), and it is now recognized that they have important roles in ensuring proper development and homeostasis of the CNS, with astrocyte dysfunction contributing to all major neurological disorders. Recent studies have shown that these cells undergo dramatic transcriptional changes in response to neuron-derived stimuli. However, what are the astrocyte-specific mechanisms that regulate these changes are still largely unknown. Here, this issue will be tackled using state-of-the art functional genomic approaches to generate a comprehensive map of the astrocyte-specific regulatory elements (with a focus on enhancers) and transcription factors that govern stimuli-induced gene expression changes. This will provide unique and original insights into the mechanisms that control stimuli-induced gene expression in non-neuronal CNS cells, with potential implications for the understanding of several neuropathologies.