On 16 April,the Faculty of Medicine in Podgorica hosted the kick-off meeting for the project "New methods for risk stratification for the progression of cancer and Alzheimer's disease in patients in Montenegro - DEMONSTRATE". The meeting was led by the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, professor Miodrag Radunović, MD, PhD. Team members from the Institute of Biomembranes, Bioenergetics and Molecular Biotechnology from Italy and the Clinical Center of Montenegro, as well as external experts from the Faculty of Science and Mathematics of the University of Montenegro, University of Donja Gorica, and from the Non-governmental Organisation Futura attended the event.
The project is based on interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and doctors from Montenegro and Italy, with the goal of studying the use of new methods for the stratification of patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma and Alzheimer’s disease, according to the risk for progression of these diseases. This will improve algorithms used for the assignment of appropriate therapeutic modalities. The outcome of this project may also improve quality of life, survival rate and decrease complications caused by these diseases.
This project was inspired by growing scientific evidence showing that these two chronic diseases usually do not occur together in the same individual - in people with cancer, the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease is very low, and vice versa. These specific patterns of co-morbidity profile suggest that the common cell signalling pathways are deregulated in the opposite direction in these two diseases, but the exact underlying mechanism at the molecular level is still unclear. The project is funded by the Ministry of Science of Montenegro.
