NANOSTEM recruited 14 ESRs that were trained in areas including organic and polymer chemistry, cell biology, pharmacology, neuroscience, nanobiotechnology and clinical sciences. The project provided an extensive training program in complementary skills, targeting both professional and personal development, and translation of research and entrepreneurship. The project delivered a total of 7 Network events, including an induction course at the beginning, three summer schools and international meetings, one joint training school with the NanoCarb ETN, one clinical workshop on the impact of the blood brain barriers in the clinics and an end of Network meeting. All the 14 ESRs participated to all the events and actively engaged with the external participants. In addition the Consortium organised a NANOSTEM dedicated session at the ESB2021 Conference on Biomaterials (September 2021
https://esb2021.org/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) that was held online, where all the ESRs delivered a scientific oral presentation.
The project achieved all its scientific deliverables, focused on the preparation of the different types of nanomaterials and also on the development of in vitro models for the blood-brain barrier, as well as collecting data on in vivo toxicity and BBB permeation. The Consortium was successful and the results have so far led to a total of 18 papers, all published in high quality journals, all open access under the gold route.
All the NANOSTEM fellows have engaged in outreach activities. For example, the ERSs actively took part to events like "Science at the Cathedral", "Science is Wonderful", "European Researchers Night", amongst many others, reaching out to hundreds of people of all ages. Unfortunately, some activities were cancelled because of COVID 19 pandemic. For example, ESRs 1, 2, and 14 were scheduled to take part to the "Big Bang Fair" in Birmingham (11th - 14th March 2020), but this event was cancelled as well as the "6th Walk for stroke of the national stroke patient day" scheduled to take place in Coimbra on the 28th of March, 2020 (ESRs 5, 6, 7, and 10).
The fellows have attended a total of 36 conferences, workshops and other meetings, a lot of which were organised as virtual events. When possible the fellows attended in person, especially when it was not requiring international travel.
The NANOSTEM website was created at the start of the project (
https://www.nanostem.qmul.ac.uk/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) and has been successful as a dissemination vehicle The newsletter, created every 4 months is also uploaded on the website and widely available.
