On 18 March, the Horizon 2020-funded RECOGNISED project convened the first meeting of its Dissemination and Exploitation Board. RECOGNISED stands for “Retinal and cognitive dysfunction in type 2 diabetes: unraveling the common pathways and identification of patients at risk of dementia”. The teleconference meeting was chaired by EATRIS, the European Infrastructure for Translational Medicine, and was attended by projects partners from academia, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and patient organisations, including Alzheimer Europe and the International Diabetes Federation.
The four-year long RECOGNISED project will study the biological mechanisms that cause structural and functional alterations in the retina in people with type 2 diabetes at risk of developing cognitive impairment and dementia. Based around the concept of the eye being a “window to the brain”, RECOGNISED will determine whether evaluating the retina, easily accessible with current non-invasive technologies, could help in identifying earlier cognitive impairment in people with T2D, so that appropriate support can be given.
The role of the RECOGNISED Dissemination and Exploitation Board (DEB) is to help guide the effective dissemination and exploitation of RECOGNISED project results, increasing project visibility for key stakeholder audiences. During the meeting, attendees discussed the dissemination and exploitation plan, intellectual property workflows, strategies for empowering patients and families, and both internal and external project communications. The DEB will be reconvened in the summer.
Angela Bradshaw represented Alzheimer Europe at this meeting.
This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 847749. This material reflects only the authors’ views, and the Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.