The project contributes to the international and inter sectoral integration of European research through a programme that supports researcher mobility between European countries, Third Countries and between industry and academia. This mobility supports knowledge exchange and researcher training through projects focused on human diseases and drug-development, with the aim of finding new treatments for disease. This research is also more widely relevant to areas that include increased food security by improving aquaculture and better protection from chemical hazards by improved methods of toxicity assessment.
The disease research focusses on problems particularly relevant to an aging population (like Europe’s) and include neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson’s disease), cancer (e.g. Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma), and inflammation. This is being accomplished by studying how proteins bind to each other to cause human disease and then searching form drug-like chemicals to block the binding and cure the disease.
The specific protein-protein interactions being investigated are the binding of Apaf-1 to itself and to caspase-9, the binding of CARD11 to BCL10, the binding of RIPK1 to RIPK1, the binding of NLRP3 to itself and to caspase-1, the binding of ASC to caspase-1 and the binding of caspase-2 to RAIDD. The overall objective is to identify at least one drug-like molecule that blocks a protein-protein interaction and that reduces or prevents disease-associated changes.
