EU funds asthma and COPD research at DZL sites

The international consortium RESPIRE-EXCEL has received 3.3 million euros from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme: Scientists from the DZL sites ARCN and CPC-M are among those to receive funding. The aim of the project is to train young scientists to advance the personalised treatment of COPD and asthma.

Over four years, RESPIRE-EXCEL* will train 15 PhD students in the latest translational techniques through multinational projects, summer schools and interactive workshops. Partners from ten European countries as well as Australia and the USA are working together. The University Medical Centre Groningen coordinates RESPIRE-EXCEL. The European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the European Lung Foundation (ELF), which is responsible for patient involvement, are also involved.

The funding comes from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme, an EU flagship scheme that aims to support the careers of excellent (post-)doctoral researchers and make Europe more attractive as a location for research. Prof. Markus Weckmann from the University of Lübeck (DZL site ARCN) is enthusiastic about the opportunities: “This unique network is a multinational milestone in passing on the specific requirements of translational lung research to the next generation. For me as training coordinator, it is a privilege to be able to accompany these highly motivated young researchers on their journey.”

In the field of asthma research at the DZL, the programme is linked to the ALLIANCE register, which also aims to study disease progression and develop individualised treatment strategies using clinical data and biomaterials from about 1,200 patients and healthy controls. In the RESPIRE-EXCEL project, Prof. Önder Yildirim, Dr. Malte Lücken and Prof. Herbert Schiller (Helmholtz Munich) from the DZL site CPC-M and Markus Weckmann from the ARCN receive funding.

Sources:
Press release of Research Center Borstel
EU Research Portal

*RESPIRE-EXCEL stands for ‘Respiratory Precision Medicine PhD Training Network- Excellence through Systems Biology, Spatial and Single-cell Transcriptomics’.

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