Project description
Female-specific insights into cardiometabolic disorders
Cardiometabolic disorders (CMD), including cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, disproportionately affect women, with distinct clinical manifestations and poorer outcomes compared to men. Despite this, the female-specific mechanisms underlying CMD remain largely unknown, hindering effective personalised treatments. In this context, the ERC-funded SEMICYCLE project will systematically study interactions between female sex hormones and the microbiota. By tracking 300 healthy women over one menstrual cycle and analysing comprehensive cross-omics data, SEMICYCLE will identify key microbiota regulators influencing glycaemic and lipid metabolism in women. These insights could revolutionise CMD prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, paving the way for personalised medicine tailored to women’s unique physiological needs.
Objective
Cardiometabolic disorders (CMD), a group of conditions that include cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, are characterised by dysfunction of glycaemic and/or lipid metabolism. Clinical manifestations, severity and progression are different between sexes, the underlying mechanisms of which are largely unknown. The poorer prognosis in women globally calls for an urgent need for better women’s tailored prevention and treatment strategies. Still, for an efficient personalised strategy, female-specific mechanisms have to be identified. The SEMICYCLE project will systematically investigate female’s sex hormones-microbiota interactions to unravel female-specific microbiota features regulating glycaemic and lipid metabolism in women during homeostasis and diseases. Findings of this research project will pinpoint key mechanisms useful to improve current prevention and diagnostic tools as well as therapeutic options of CMD. SEMICYCLE will follow up 300 healthy women during one menstrual cycle and longitudinal cross-omics data (five layers of information from host genome, gut microbiome, gut metabolome, vaginal microbiome, plasma proteome) will be generated, analysed and integrated with female sex hormones variations, lifestyle and diet, glycaemic and lipid phenotypes using state-of-the-art methodologies and computational approaches. Subsequently, mechanisms identified during homeostasis will be investigated for association with CMD onset and progression, using already existing cohorts totalling more than 10,000 samples. This research is based on my expertise and that of my research group in generating and analysing omics data in large data sets. Findings will reveal previously unknown microbiota regulators of CMD in women thus offering alternative routes for prevention, diagnosis and treatments in women, a necessary step for an efficient personalised medicine.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsproteomics
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineendocrinologydiabetes
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinephysiologyhomeostasis
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
00185 Roma
Italy