Project description
Decoding vascular inflammation through integrative intelligence
Vascular inflammation is a major driver of cardiovascular disease, including atherosclerosis, which is often diagnosed and treated only at advanced stages. Earlier intervention requires a better understanding of how inflammation emerges from interactions between mechanical, biological and chemical processes across scales. The ERC-funded VISTA project will develop a computational framework that integrates physics-based models with AI-driven knowledge networks. Combining biomechanics, mechanobiology and systemic processes influencing vascular health, the project will create virtual patient models that capture the dynamic mechanisms underlying vascular inflammation from its earliest stages. Beyond improving diagnosis and personalised therapies, VISTA aims to advance an integrative intelligence framework for studying multifactorial systems, where the complexity arising from interacting data, scales and mechanisms is embraced and structured.
Objective
Vascular inflammation (VI) drives most cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of global mortality and disability, with atherosclerosis as a key manifestation. Current clinical strategies focus on advanced stages of atherosclerosis, where interventions yield limited benefits. VISTA aims to transform this paradigm by pioneering computational tools for early diagnosis and treatment, bridging the gap between preclinical research and clinical translation. VISTA integrates computational mechanics, chemo-mechano-biology, and machine learning to tackle the challenges of multifactorial diseases. By introducing groundbreaking in silico tools, it seeks to reshape our understanding of VI, advancing preventive and personalized cardiovascular medicine.
Key challenges in VI include: (1) Current approaches struggle to synthetise the wealth of evidence on the interplay between biomechanics, biology, and systemic processes. (2) Translating causal insights into clinical applications requires linking evidence to precise mechanisms. (3) Clinical approaches and preclinical research remain rooted in traditional theories, lacking support from in silico tools that fail to incorporate real-world perspectives.
VISTA tackles these challenges through three objectives: (1) Developing a graph-informed modelling approach to create virtual patient models by synthesizing evidence-based networks of multiscale interactions. (2) Uncovering mechanistic pathways of VI by creating workflows that combine physics-based models, surrogate modelling, and generative AI. (3) Demonstrating the credibility of in silico methods in clinics and biomedical research.
This roadmap will deliver an innovative framework for the early discovery of multifactorial VI mechanisms, uniquely integrating tissue biomechanics, systemic physiopathology, and cell biology. It will advance patient-specific modelling and enable in silico clinical trials, opening pathways for early interventions and transformative therapies.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine cardiology cardiovascular diseases arteriosclerosis
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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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.
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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.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00133 Roma
Italy
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