Since the beginning of ERA@UC, the project accomplished twelve deliverables, five milestones and progressed significantly on its main objectives.
The current reporting period focused on strengthening, integrating and adding new members to the ERA Chair team; performing the research proposed planned in the research plan; advancing on innovative teaching programmes; disseminating the project; building up institutional and public support; and securing funding for sustainability of the project.
Accordingly, the following activities have been performed:
The team of the ERA Chair project has been successfully constituted and is developing the planned research, under the supervision of the ERA Chair holder. The research program has concentrated on developing the ageing models such as cardiac and vascular cell models derived from induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSCs). The new models have been critical to better understand mechanisms of age-related diseases and the development of advanced synthetic and natural vectors designed to release molecular therapeutics (miRNAs and CRISPR system) with spatio-temporal control. Accordingly, progress had been done in accomplishing most of the research specific aims: (i) Aim 1: engineering aged cardiac tissue (completion: 35%); (ii) Aim 2: therapeutics for vascular ageing (completion: 70%): (iii) Aim 3: therapeutics for the aged heart (completion: 40%); Aim 4: therapeutics for the aged brain (completion: 40%).
The overall research efforts resulted in publishing eleven articles, two of which were with impact factor (IF), higher than 10. Six articles were published in journals with IF higher than 6 (lower than 10). Three articles were published in journals with IF lower than 6. Currently 2 more articles have been submitted (October 2018).
With regards to innovative advanced teaching programs for young researchers at PhD and postdoctoral levels, the ERA Chair team: (i) participated in 17 events including international conferences, and training schools, (ii) organised 12 seminars in the context of ageing and related topics; (iii) was involved in organising educational modules for three PhD programs at University of Coimbra (MIT-Portugal Bioengineering; Ageing and Chronic Diseases; Experimental Biology and Biomedicine), (iv) proposed an educational module for a MSc program.
The ERA Chair project secured high level of competitive funding through: (i) attracting 2.5 million euro; (ii) applying for 7 million euro, and (iii) pending for decision regarding 1.6 million euro funds.
Following the project objective of fostering institutional changes towards a more competitive and sustainable research environment the ERA Chair holder has been nominated as a thematic research coordinator of the Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB), considered to be the most important in the “Centro” Region of Portugal. The interactions resulted in the involvement of the ERA Chair team in seven collaborative projects with high international visibility.
Additionally, the ERA Chair holder organized advocacy meetings at the board of the Faculty of Medicine and Rectorate of the University of Coimbra to engage the decision makers with the ERA Chair project, and to foster initiatives to support the area of ageing.
The ERA Chair team has also been actively engaged in promoting the project to stakeholders and public. This was assured on the occasion of following activities: (i) performing trainings at the Institute for Education and Citizenship (IEC), (ii) participating in the public events like science festivals (“Noite dos Investigadores”, “Oliveira do Bairro science festival”, “Paisagens Neurológicas”, (iii) publishing didactic materials in regional/national press, and (iv) developed an informative video about cardiovascular ageing publicly available through you tube channel (
vi(se abrirá en una nueva ventana) gave lectures to high-school students about ageing.
