INSPIRE – Innovative Detection Tools for Monitoring skeletal diseases and cancer across species

Funding: FCT, I.P.

Grant agreement: 2024.15575.PEX

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54499/2024.15575.PEX

P.I.: Margarida Dias

World population and life expectancy is on the rise. By 2050, from the 9.7B world’s population, 2.1B will be people aged 60 years, outnumbering 5-year-olds. This brings important challenges for society, economy and specially for healthcare systems, concerns UN and European Union. Ageing impacts health and increase pressure over healthcare systems. Thus, age-related diseases required to bridge science and clinical care for earlier detection, prevention and personalized treatments.

In INSPIRE we aim to contribute with novel strategies to study and monitor skeletal diseases and cancer. INSPIRE will contribute to bridge the gap between basic & applied research, contributing to more accurate, timely, and effective healthcare solutions.

INSPIRE aims to bring innovation to bioproduction biotherapeutics (SDG9, 12) and develop novel tools to monitor age related diseases (SDG3).

INSPIRE will provide a novel tool to monitor disease that are more affordable than conventional methods (SDG3). Thus, INSPIRE project is aligned with UN2030 sustainability goals 3, 9 and 12, as well as the European Green Deal and Beating Cancer plan promoted by EU.

SUBTLE: Sustainable anticounterfeiting tags secured with AI authentication

Funding: FCT, I.P.

Grant agreement: 2023.12656.PEX

DOI: 10.54499/2023.12656.PEX 

P.I.: Susana Palma

Unraveling Parkinson’s Disease Diagnostic

Funding: European Research Council (ERC- 2023-POC)

Grant agreement No 101158248

DOI: 10.3030/101158248

P.I.: Cecília Roque

Parkinson´s disease (PD) is a progressive, chronic, and debilitating neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure and no diagnostic test available. About 10 million people live with PD worldwide (1.2 million in Europe), and this number is expected to double by 2030 due to the aging population. PD has a high social and economic burden, and there is the need to improve PD timely detection and diagnosis, especially in young people.
UNMASK aims to validate the technological and business feasibility of the olfaction-inspired technology developed in the ERC Starting Grant SCENT by establishing the proof-of-concept for the non-invasive and fast PD diagnostics. To accomplish this, we will approach the project from both Technical and Business perspectives, with a perfect synergy between the research and business teams, and a close contact with clinical collaborators and stakeholders.

Prospecting natural lignin biodiversity towards unlocking value-added bioactive motifs and molecules 

Funding: Horizon Europe

Grant agreement: No 101135298

P.I.: Cecília Roque

Global terrestrial plant biodiversity remains a largely untapped source of natural bioactive compounds. In fact, valid sources are even “hiding in plain sight”, yet not “within reach” due to lack of effective technical solutions to unlock their potential. In this context, the PROSPLIGN consortium has developed an innovative bioprospecting approach that uses cutting-edge and complementary chemical and enzymatic methods, supported by statistical analysis and coupled with high-throughput detection methods, to enable the discovery of bioactive molecules from lignin, one of the fractions of the most abundant biopolymer on Earth (lignocellulose). Lignin “chemical biodiversity” will enable PROSPLIGN to cover three target markets (pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and fragrances) with a combined market of more than €1.4 trillion.

For more information go to https://prosplign.eu/

Computational Toolbox for Discovery of new Affinity Ligands

Funding: FCT I. P. 

Grant agreement 2023.10437.CPCA.A2

HfPT – Health from Portugal

Funding: Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência (PRR) – RE-C05-i01.01 – Agendas/Alianças mobilizadoras para a Inovação Empresarial

Project code: C630926586-00465198

The HfPT agenda aims to position Portugal as a global reference hub in the design, development, and production of advanced solutions for the healthcare markets, based on innovation and technology. HfPT will focus on four areas of investment:

1. Developing smart health solutions targeted at the digital medtech segment.
2. Creating a national intelligent repository of internationally renowned health data.
3. Empowering the growth and sophistication of the clinical studies segment in the country.
4. Creating solutions that enhance the potential of the data collection and benchmarking ecosystem for clinical data and associated healthcare costs.

These investments will be addressed by a consortium of 88 co-promoters who complement each other technically and technologically, concentrating the necessary capacity to achieve the ambitious goals set, which aim to launch 99 new products.

Our Research Group is contributing to the Workpackage 2 of the HfPT agenda – “Biomaterials and nanomedicine”, being part of the consortium dedicated to the PPS A2.2 – “Monitoring technologies for drug degradation”. In PPS A2.2 we are partnering with CENTI and Neutroplast to develop a smart transportation package for medications able to monitor the transportation and storage conditions. Humidity is one of the parameters that affects drug stability in medications. Our task is to create a simple bioindicator to alert for adverse humidity conditions inside the packaging.

Affinity ligands towards the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

Funding: FCT I. P. 

Grant agreement 2023.10436.CPCA.A1

The project aims to unravel the atomistic details of lead ligands bound to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 with atomistic Molecular Dynamics Simulations and free energy calculations. The results will guide the selection of top ligands to pursue experimental validation of spike 2 Virus Like Particles at a higher scale.