(Adnkronos) - “Per il nostro laboratorio rappresenta la grande sfida di partecipare a creare la medicina del domani e la medicina del futuro e come università, come ricercatori italiani, è importante dimostrare che abbiamo le competenze per farlo. L'Italia è piena di competenze di studiosi e studiose che possono raggiungere questi obiettivi. Spero anche che sia uno stimolo per i miei colleghi a competere a livello europeo”. Sono le parole di Elena Cattaneo, docente di Farmacologia del Dipartimento di Bioscienze dell’università degli Studi di Milano, e senatrice a vita, che si è aggiudicata, insieme al suo team, gli ERC Synergy Grant 2024 con il progetto ‘Custom-Made – Neurons for cell therapy in Parkinsons’ and Huntington’s disease’, che verrà sviluppato, nei prossimi 6 anni con un finanziamento di 10 milioni di euro, nel corso della conferenza stampa di assegnazione degli ERC Synergy Grant 2024, intitolata “Ricerca scientifica di frontiera: la Statale che vince in Europa”, svoltasi presso la Sala del Consiglio del Rettorato dell’Università degli Studi di Milano.
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00:00This is a project that we have been pursuing for two years.
00:08It is a competitive and prestigious European funding
00:12that involves three other women, three scientists with me,
00:16another colleague from the University of Turin, Anna-Lisa Buffo,
00:19then Jenny Mneus from the University of Denmark
00:23and Malin Parmar from the University of Lund.
00:26Together, the four of us have set ourselves the goal
00:30of developing new strategies based on stem cells
00:36for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases
00:40such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease.
00:44The current clinical experimentation strategies
00:48require that for Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases
00:54we proceed with the transplant of the same cellular preparation.
00:58But we know that the disease manifests itself
01:01with different characteristics in different patients,
01:04so we need to produce stem cell preparations
01:08suitable for the different needs of the patient.
01:11This is the goal.
01:13We will have six years to achieve this goal.
01:16It will be a lot of research, it will be a great team effort
01:21and we really have to thank Europe,
01:24which gives us the motivation, the strength and the goal
01:29to overcome the boundaries to work together for the benefit of the citizen.
01:33This project allows us to study how our brain works
01:40and how the brain heals in different neurodegenerative diseases
01:45with the aim of restoring the circuits in these diseases.
01:53So the goal is cognitive, the goal is therapeutic
01:57and for our laboratory it represents a great challenge,
02:00the challenge of participating to create the medicine of tomorrow,
02:05the medicine of the future,
02:07and as a university, as Italian researchers,
02:13it is important to show that we have the skills to do it
02:19and Italy is full of students who can achieve these goals,
02:26so I also hope that it is a stimulus for my colleagues to compete at the European level.