Project description
Sleep disruption and biological ageing
The quality of sleep declines with age and it is also disrupted in many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neurodegeneration. Growing evidence suggests that sleep and circadian rhythm disruption do not merely accompany ageing and disease but actively drive them. Understanding this causal relationship could open new strategies for reducing the burden of age-related disease through sleep improvement. The ERC-funded SCIRCLE project aims to investigate how sleep patterns and biological rhythms change with age, using large longitudinal studies and biobanks. Researchers will develop blood-based biomarkers of circadian disruption and apply causal inference and deep learning methods to uncover how sleep disruption contributes to age-related disease.
Objective
Circadian rhythms are endogenous near-24 hour cycles that regulate most biological processes. When cycles are misaligned to the external world, this can cause sleep disorders and associated ill health. Deterioration in sleep quality is a prominent feature of ageing and poor sleep is characteristic of many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurodegeneration and some cancers. Growing evidence suggests that sleep and circadian rhythm disruption (SCRD) is not only a consequence of ageing, but can impact ageing processes and cause age-related disease.
The health burden of sleep disorders and population ageing underscore the need for further research. If SCRD is causally linked to age-related disease, improving sleep across the lifespan could reduce chronic disease burden. Further, developing robust and easy-to-measure biomarkers of circadian disruption is pivotal for assessing circadian function and predicting health risks in clinical settings, and could enhance timing-based therapies.
I will bring together the fields of integrative epidemiology and sleep/circadian science to explore how sleep patterns and circadian rhythms change as we age, and to understand their roles in the ageing process. I will address the knowledge gap in how biological and social factors influence sleep across the lifespan, and investigate the potential of blood-based biomarkers to capture circadian dynamics. Now is the optimal time to embark on these efforts, exploiting rapidly growing collections of detailed sleep measures in longitudinal studies and biobanks with time-stamped biological samples and disease outcomes. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to scale-up sleep and circadian science. The research will advance the state-of-the-art using advanced causal inference and deep learning methods, and harnessing genetic and molecular data, to uncover novel insights into the links between SCRD and age-related disease with huge clinical and public health benefit.
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.
You need to log in or register to use this function
Keywords
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.
-
HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
See all projects funded under this programme
Topic(s)
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.
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.
Funding Scheme
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.
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
See all projects funded under this funding scheme
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
See all projects funded under this callHost institution
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.
BS8 1QU BRISTOL
United Kingdom
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.