Education

Researchers from Porto are granted funds to solve unsolved rare diseases

  • Article

    Article

#mno_i3s_ext.jpg

The "Solving the unsolved Rare Diseases" project was recently funded by the European Commission, through the Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020).

This funding will amount to around 15.5 million euros and the project involves over 20 institutions in nine European countries, namely the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health of the University of Porto (i3S), from Portugal.

The amount of 250 thousand euros has already been found for the i3S Expression Regulation in Cancer research project led by Carla Oliveira.

The researcher from Porto and representative of Porto Comprehensive Cancer Centre (i3S and IPO-Porto, associated with São João Hospital Centre) at the GENTURIS European Network of Reference, is leading a project on hereditary diffuse gastric cancer, which also involves resarchers from Ipatimup/i3S, São João Hospital Centre, the Stichting Katholieke Universiteit de Nijmegen, (The Netherlands) and Cambridge University (United Kingdom).

According to Carla Oliveira, "the success of the application was made possible because the Ipatimup/i3S team was formally engaged in ERN GENTURIS".

The fundamental goal of this project is to "sort out a large number of Rare Diseases, for which the genetic cause is not known at this time and to improve diagnosis and disease management through a network of genetic knowledge", the researcher highlights.

The entire project, Carla Oliveira says, "was conceived and organised by four European Reference Networks but it covers all 24 existing networks", and the purpose is to deal with unsolved diseases by implementing the most modern technology in the lab.

With the Solving the Unsolved Rare Diseases Project (SOLVE-RD), Carla Oliveira states, "we foresee actions to further the extent of the diagnosis capacity in approximately three to five per cent, i.e making progress in solutions of diagnosis".

The SOLVE-RD Project will have a significant impact on clinical practice regarding rare diseases in Europe.

More information on the Solve-RD Project at: www.solve-rd.eu