GlycanTrigger is a project funded by the European Union, within the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions (RIA). The long-term goal of GlycanTrigger is to unlock a new checkpoint that regulates health to chronic inflammation transition by proposing mucosa glycans modifications as a master switch towards the early perturbation of host-microbial interactions and the consequent activation of both innate and humoral immune systems. Ultimately, we want to intercept or revert this master switch and thereby exploit/analyse whether this constitutes an opportunity to prevent the development of chronic inflammation in at-risk individuals.
Chronic inflammation is the underlying cause of numerous diseases, including Crohn's disease (CD), which may have a preclinical phase with immunological changes occurring before symptoms manifest. To improve disease prediction and prevention, our innovative approach seeks to understand the health-to-intestinal inflammation transition using CD as a disease model. The GlycanTrigger project will investigate when, why and how changes in glycosylation at the surface of the gut mucosa, constitute an early trigger of the health-to-inflammation transition. We will address how changes in glycosylation of the gut mucosa act as a primary event that dysregulates not only local mechanisms, but also systemic mechanisms associated with health to inflammation transition. Although high-risk/high-gain, our project is based on appropriate and long-standing expertise and fundamental biological principles that the consortium has helped establish and is thus likely to lead to (i) breakthrough biomedical concepts in the driving factors that trigger the health to chronic inflammation transition and to (ii) novel predictive tools for early detection of at-risk individuals to develop chronic inflammation, as well as to (iii) a novel intervention strategy that will be tested for disease prevention. In the longer term, the results of GlycanTrigger will improve health literacy through better-informed management of health status, diet and life-style to maintain a healthy gut.
Our strategy for understanding the transition from health to gut inflammation is comprehensive and includes the impact of mucosa glycans on local and systemic mechanisms.
