Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DRIVE (Driving next generation autophagy researchers towards translation)
Berichtszeitraum: 2019-11-01 bis 2022-04-30
Moreover, despite the great promises made by pioneering medical studies, the still limited applied research on autophagy has hampered the translation of fundamental knowledge into clinical-grade products and improved healthcare. Applied autophagy research is essential to understand the roles of autophagy in the different physiological and pathological situations, to generate (disease) models and develop biomarkers and assays to assess its progress.
The ultimate goal of the ETN Driving next generation autophagy researchers towards translation (DRIVE) has been to train 15 young scientists through a tailored program, to fill these two gaps. Each one of them has realized a cutting-edge project in either an academic research group or company.
The two ultimate goals of DRIVE have been reached through the realization of the following 4 main objectives:
1. Completion of 15 research projects addressing the 3 key research challenges (biomarkers, assays and conceptual advances) from different angles to reinforce applied autophagy research, with the aim to promote its translation
2. Training a new generation of researchers through individual research projects, sharing all the same main challenges, intra- and intersectoral secondments, local and network-wide training
3. Adopting an interdisciplinary and intersectoral approach through the composition of the consortium and the large number of associated partners
4. Creating an efficient network of researchers from academia and industry, working closely together towards the success of DRIVE