The work carried out during the first 24 months of the project are to a great extent in line with Annex 1 of the Grant Agreement. Within this first project period we aimed for a smooth functioning of the management of the project. The utmost care and attention was made to have open, transparent, impartial, merit-based and equitable selection and evaluation procedures, and to select the most excellent, talented and highly motivated eligible Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). In total there were four recruitment calls for proposals to fill all available positions. Per vacancy there were on average 48 number of applications. The successful appointed ESRs have begun their research and training, with the appropriate supervision, which is captured in the university-wide PhD-candidate tracking system MyPhD. All required ethical approvals and authorisations are obtained and kept on file. The research that is and will be conducted is in compliance with the ethical principles and applicable international, EU and national law under H2020. Next to the Regenerative Medicine PhD school courses, like Intro to RM and intro to Stem Cells, Perspectives in RM, Bench to Bedside and PhD retreats, the RESCUE project has organised several other workshops and courses. These included e.g. the introduction to the RESCUE project, living and working in the Netherlands by the SME Talent4NL, Dutch language, FAIR Data Management and an entrepreneurial education workshop titled ‘The importance and outcomes of Early Clinical Evaluation’. RM Utrecht organised a symposium to celebrate the start of the RESCUE-COFUND doctorate programme with the new ESRs and also to welcome RM colleagues of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (including RESCUE students and PIs) to the RMU/Hubrecht building.
The first peer-reviewed papers have been published, master students were supervised, presentations were given to the scientific and clinical community, but also to the general public, including high school students. Some projects have been upgraded to proof-of-concept, a provisional EU patent application was filed and a few secondments have already been performed at our Partner Organisations.
Research done in this project on Regenerative Medicine is for the most part lab-based. Due to the COVID-19 lock-down laboratories were closed for three months and also clinical research could not be performed. Resuming and scaling up research activities was done carefully under strict conditions, following specific requirements. The fellows teleworked from home, worked on their admin, papers, planning, online courses and other tasks, but the impact due to the closure of the labs, postponement of courses and diminished mobility opportunities is substantial.
