Twinning for Excellence in Research, Training and Innovation in Protein Misfolding Diseases

Protein misfolding diseases (PMDs) are a large group of human disorders caused by protein misfolding and include serious conditions with high socio-economic impact, such as Alzheimer’s disease, systemic amyloidosis, obesity, cystic fibrosis, retinitis pigmentosa and type 2 diabetes. The vast majority of them remain incurable so there is currently a great need for the development of effective therapeutics against them. Among the >70 known PMDs, about one third occur due to the misfolding of integral membrane proteins (MPs). MPs, however, are notoriously difficult to overexpress, isolate and study, both biochemically and structurally, thus constituting particularly challenging targets for therapeutic intervention with only few lead molecules in (pre)clinical pipelines. Furthermore, the scientific community involved in PMDs remains fragmented, with the majority of research targeting soluble proteins and only a small, rather isolated, sub-community focusing on misfolding-prone MPs. The National Hellenic Research Foundation has been exploiting the power of synthetic biology to develop efficient technologies targeting the misfolding of both soluble and membrane proteins. The coordinator wishes to build on these initial successes to partner with three prominent centers in PMD and synthetic biology research in order to establish a new excellence hub in research, training and innovation in PMDs and consolidate the scientific community in this field. Through this process, it will acquire a position among the leaders in the field of PMDs and converge with the most advanced institutions in terms of the quality of scientific data it produces, number of top-tier of scientific papers it publishes, amount of funding it secures from competitive sources, efficiency with which it trains its young scientists and contributes to their career development, the way it communicates the results of its research activity and converts them to tangible outcomes for high-tech entrepreneurship...