This proposal will establish an integrated and synergistic network to address the challenge of multiple drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) facing the EU. The objective will be attained through the establishment of a European sortium of expert partners with extensive experience in the duct of basic and clinical research relating to MDR-TB, TB trol and epidemiology.
Osteoporosis is a common, age-related disease with a strong genetic component. With increasing age of the population, Europe and industrialised countries across the globe are facing a substantial increase in osteoporotic fractures, which account for considerable disease-burden and costs. Early identification and treatment of subjects at risk can help preventing this, and genetic susceptibility alleles are the most promising risk factors in this respect.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. It is therefore in the focus of approaches for the identification of predictive molecular biomarkers. In contrast to transcriptomics, the changes in metabolite levels that are associated with tumour development and progression have not been investigated to a great extent, so far. Metabolomics is defined as the study of all metabolites in a cell, tissue or organism, and the metabolome is regarded as the amplified output of a biological system.
T-cell activation, whether induced by pathogens or auto-antigens, is a complex process relying on multiple layers of tightly controlled intracellular signalling modules that form an intricate network. Defects in this network can cause severe and chronic disorders such as autoimmune diseases. Although 5% of the population suffer from these diseases, only a few therapeutic treatments are available. To a large extent this is attributed to the lack of systems-level insights, which would provide concepts of how to modulate T-cell activation.
