The recruitment of suitable early-stage researchers (ESRs) for all 12 PhD positions was successfully completed. The rigorous recruitment procedure ensured that only excellent candidates were chosen. We established a number of supervision arrangements to provide our PhD students with the best possible support, allowing them to benefit from the interdisciplinary nature of the program. ARDRE PIs organized various conferences, including the yearly Joint AGE_REG & ARDRE Summer Schools and Winter Schools, the 2nd FEBS Workshop Ageing and Regeneration, and annual Life Science PhD Meetings in Innsbruck. We also organized ARDRE Mini retreats, to bring together the ARDRE ESRs in an informal setting, in absence of their supervisors.
Overview of ARDRE results, their exploitation and dissemination: Highlights in the area of aging research comprise novel insight in the role of cellular senescence in skin aging and new insight into how senescent cells can be targeted for rejuvenation in the skin and other tissues. In addition, we obtained new insight into the role of adipocytes in weight loss in humans and the role of adipocytes in the context of caloric restriction. Highlights in the area of regeneration research have addressed the interplay between development and regeneration using as model organisms the two invertebrate species Hydra oligactis and Ciona intestinalis, which allows to recapitulate the evolution of critical aspects of regenerative capacity in animal evolution. ARDRE ESRs also used pluripotent stem cells to model human age-associated neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease and Hutchinson Guilford progeria. In the area of drug research, ARDRE ESRs focused on the role of calcium channels in human neurodevelopmental diseases, including in silico phenotype prediction based on the structure of small molecules. Additional work in this branch yielded new insight in the use of drugs targeting mTOR and PI3K for novel aspects of tumor therapy. Finally, the isolation and characterization of novel natural compounds for treating human diseases was a key part of ARDRE. Concerning dissemination, the action ARDRE generated an impressive list of publications (n = 53 so far), among them publications in top journals, including Nature, Nature Communications, Cell, Aging Cell, PNAS, and The FEBS Journal, respectively. So far, 9 ESRs have defended their PhD theses; for the remaining 3 ESRs, we expect the defensio to happen in the near future. In 2 ARDRE subprojects that were combined with a secondment of the respective ESR to a pharmaceutical company, exploitation of project results has already started. In several cases, ARDRE PIs were contacted by private companies who are interested in collaboration for exploiting key project results. For the remaining projects, exploitation of project results is currently being prepared and we anticipate considerable exploitation activities in the near future.
