Project description
New kits and devices shed light on lipid transport in health and disease
The transport of lipids in the human body is essential to many processes, including energy storage, hormone regulation and nutrient transport. Its dysregulation is implicated in numerous disorders affecting the cardiovascular system, liver and lungs. It also plays an interrelated role in pathologies such as diabetes, cancer, inflammatory conditions and neurodegenerative diseases. Understanding lipid transport in health and disease is hindered by technological barriers to studying it. The ERC-funded AURORA project plans to upscale its current protocols to high-throughput screening set-ups. These will be implemented in ready-to-use kits and devices enabling academic laboratories and the pharmaceutical industry to address many important questions in lipid transport for the first time.
Objective
Dysregulation of lipid transport and metabolism is at the center of many diseases. Despite its crucial role, gaining a full understanding of lipid transport remains challenging as visualizing lipids and their transport by microscopy is almost impossible. By providing technological solutions to this problem, we envision to enable new therapeutic strategies with the corresponding benefits for society at large. A better understanding of lipid transport can help guide the design of drugs to for example treat fatty liver disease, which is estimated to affect up to quarter of the global population. During the ERC PoC grant period, we plan to translate our current protocols to high throughput screening setups with the goal to service the pharmaceutical industry and design ready-to-use kits and devices that will allow academic laboratories to answer their unique research questions.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept GrantsHost institution
80539 Munchen
Germany