Objective
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a prototypic CD4+ T cell-mediated autoimmune disease that damages the central nervous system. MS affects young adults and women twice as often as men. Neurological deficits cause substantial disability at an early age with high socioeconomic impact.
Both a complex genetic trait and environmental factors are involved in MS etiology. Similar to other autoimmune diseases it has been known for almost 40 years that certain HLA-class II genes, in MS the two DR15 alleles DRB1*15:01 and DRB5*01:01, confer by far most of the genetic risk. Despite this clear role remarkably little is known about the functional contribution of these genes to MS pathogenesis, and this holds also true for all other T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. It is assumed that the DR15 alleles present peptides from organ-specific self-proteins to T cells and select an autoreactive CD4+ T cell repertoire that can be activated by certain environmental triggers. Interestingly, the effects of the three known environmental risk factors in MS, Epstein Barr virus (EBV), low vitamin D3 and smoking, are all amplified by DR15.
This core issue of research on autoimmune diseases and also MS, how disease-associated HLA-class II molecules contribute to disease development at the functional level, will be studied with state-of-the-art methodologies and a series of novel approaches. These will include in silico modeling approaches, studies of self-peptides, T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire and HLA-DR/peptide complexes, clonally expanded T cells from MS brain tissue and hypothesis-open methods such as combinatorial chemistry and tissue-derived cDNA libraries to identify target antigens. Finally, translational studies will investigate the relationship between the above aspects and MS disease heterogeneity and explore antigen-specific tolerization in proof-of concept clinical trials in MS.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- medical and health sciences basic medicine neurology multiple sclerosis
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology autoimmune diseases
- medical and health sciences basic medicine medical genetics
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
ERC-2013-ADG
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Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Host institution
8006 ZURICH
Switzerland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.