Research Projects

IMI’s growing neurodegenerative disorders (ND) portfolio is to get a new, dynamic platform – NEURONET – that will make it easier for the many projects to exploit synergies and connect the resources and needs of the different projects. NEURONET aims to be a key enabler and mediator across the portfolio, assisting in identifying gaps, multiplying...

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are the cornerstone of many regenerative medicine projects, and offer researchers a powerful new approach to model and study a range of diseases. The European Bank for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (EBiSC) was established to provide researchers across academia and the pharmaceutical industry with disease...

In response to the need to tackle increasingly complex medical research questions, a growing amount of human health data is being collected, either in routine Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) databases, through research-driven cohort studies, in biobanks or related efforts. However, data sources are typically fragmented and contain information...

The secondary prevention of Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) is achievable if we can identify individuals at risk of disease progression defined by biomarker evidence of AD pathology and no or only minimal clinical symptoms and engage them in a standing adaptive clinical trial, of the highest quality, testing multiple interventions.

To achieve this, EPAD...

Pharmaceutical industry, as well as basic science, depend on robust data and scientific rigor as key drivers for decision making, patent strength and time-to-market, which in turn will determine knowledge gain and availability of new treatments to patients. Recent publications report challenges with the robustness, rigor, and/or validity of...

FERROptosis inhibitors for NEUROdegenerative disorders (NeuroFerro) will focus on the development of potent compounds with improved pharmacokinetic properties, including blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability for future application in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. Ferroptosis is non-apoptotic programmed cell death that has been...

The goal of Project RELIEVE is to build the very first non-invasive effective closed-loop monitoring and intervention system for brain-related disorders. The outcomes can be used to treat or manage various psychiatric and neurological disorders. We do this by pushing the technological boundaries in two separate domains. (1) AI domain: We develop a...

Follow.Me aims to satisfy people’s desire of monitoring the position of elderly people with different forms of dementia and Alzheimer, in order to prevent danger situations. Caregivers and family members will be able to track their patients and loved ones using geofencing technologies in order to know when they leave or enter a given area, the...

The recent advent of therapeutic Aβ-antibodies has validated amyloid plaques as drug targets in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). They remain expensive, prone to side effects, and clinical benefit is limited. The field needs a safe and cheap drug, preferably a small compound that can be taken orally, and in a preventative way before brain damage has...

The EU population is increasingly exposed to new physical and chemical agents in the environment, some of which may be detrimental to public health. Of these, electromagnetic fields (EMF) are one of the most ubiquitous, with new EMF technologies and novel applications being actively developed and commercialised. To address pertinent questions on...

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a major health problem worldwide. New therapies require an accelerated translation of genetic information into mechanistic insights. Given limitations of rodent models, fully humanized models are needed to capture the complexity of the disease process. Human stem cells (iPS) provide great possibilities but are largely...

Increasing evidence suggests that the genetic information in our bodies can vary from cell to cell. Such variation has also been found in the brain, although its consequences for brain function or disease remain largely unknown. In this project, we will study the role of genomic instability in Alzheimer's disease and related tauopathies. The...