As planned, the network has involved 11 main interacting participants and 9 partners, from hospitals, academic laboratories and SMEs, from 7 European or EU-associated countries: France, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria and Israel. These participants were each expert on a specific aspect of research related to NC. Their cumulative expertise has provided an exceptional environment for ESRs, both for excellent research training and multiple transferable skills. Our ESRs have successfully completed the program with a portfolio of high-quality publications combined with world-leading career development and employability. Among the major scientific and technical advances achieved during the program, we highlight single cell transcriptomic approaches to decipher the programs of NC development, from early patterning to late tissue specification; the programs of normal and pathological epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; the establishment of robust and scalable protocols to program human stem cells into cranial or trunk neural crest cells; and an innovative melanoma xenograft model in larval zebrafish to explore in vivo human melanoma cell migration. These strategies and new tools have been combined with experimental embryology, molecular biology and biochemistry to understand numerous new and complex functional regulations driving normal and pathological NC/NC-derived cell behaviours. These studies include large-scale gene discovery, the biology of normal and diseased NC-derived cells, and analyses of the impact of the micro-environment during tumour progression of melanoma and neuroblastoma. Those interconnected studies are now being published as the ESRs are defending their thesis work. Over 20 scientific publications will be produced, 6 publications are already accepted for publication in some of the best journals of the field and 12 are in preparation. Furthermore, we had strong emphasis on ESR training for efficient interaction with public and patient associations, which is essential for fostering an improved communication between scientists and society. This has generated new educational and outreach materials (including a wikipedia article and over forty events with various public groups) based on new findings from our ESRs and from their enthusiasm in sharing their scientific life experiences with younger students, patients and the public.
Overall, despite the adverse geopolitical and global health context, the NEUcrest program has overcome all difficulties and fulfilled its goals of training a group of 15 young scientists skilled in neural crest biology and disease, highly aware of the importance of linking Science and Society. The majority of these ESRs will continue pursuing science-related activities. Under the NEUcrest umbrella, all ESRs are tightly interconnected as friends, share an impressive training portfolio, have created a European network of institutes, laboratories, individual established scientists that will enable them to engage in their future careers with full efficiency. Seing this success, it is highly likely that the beneficiary laboratories will soon apply for another ITN program.
