In its meeting of March 3, the Supervisory Board of the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) has approved funding of 8 projects out of the 13 proposals;
CARIM received 3 CTMM grants
1. Prof dr H. ten Cate, Internal Medicine
Title: Innovative Coagulation Diagnostics (INCOAG)
Innovatie in de diagnostiek van de bloedstolling
2. Prof dr M. Post, Physiology
Title: Early Molecular Imaging of Neovascularization in Cardiovascular disease (EMINENCE)
Nieuwe bloedvaten in beeld
3. Prof dr M. Daemen, Pathology
Title:The assessment of the Plaque AT RISK by non-invasive (molecular) imaging and modelling (PARISk)
Bepalen van de hoogrisico plaque door (moleculaire) imaging en modellering
General
In response to the first call for project proposals in 2007, the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) announced on April 1, 2008, that nine first-call projects would receive research funding amounting to a total of 150 million Euro. On March 10, 2009, it announced that eight new project proposals, submitted in the fall of 2008 in response to the second call for proposals, will receive funding amounting to a total of almost another 100 million Euro.
All Dutch university medical centers, plus several universities, a broad spectrum of small and medium-sized enterprises, major industry leaders including Philips and Schering-Plough, and the Dutch Government are involved.
The funding is provided by the Dutch government, industry and academia. The research is focused firmly on the ‘translational’ aspects of molecular medicine so that results can be applied as quickly as possible to actual patient care.
Incoag is one of the projects from the second call.
Innovative Coagulation Diagnostics (INCOAG)
Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. H. ten Cate (Maastricht University Medical Center)
The blood clotting system serves a vital role in the protection against bleeding in case of injury. However, in particular cases the blood clotting process can also be activated in response to internal injuries of the vascular system (for example, inflammation) in the absence of bleeding, which can result in the formation of an intravascular thrombus leading to thrombosis. Current tests to assess blood clotting tendencies, and hence the risk of thrombosis, are laboratory based and lack sensitivity. The INCOAG project aims to develop a set of state-of-the-art diagnostic tests that can be used in near-patient settings to estimate, more easily and more sensitively than is currently possible, the risk of venous or arterial thrombosis. These same tests will also be targeted at assessment of the efficacy of preventive and curative antithrombotic medications. These tests will take the form of acute marker assays that estimate actual clotting activity in the blood, and capacity assays that detect the capacity of the blood to clot. As a parallel exercise, the INCOAG project also aims to discover new types of thrombotic risk marker, possibly in the form of microRNA molecules.
|
|
|
Prof. Dr. H. ten Cate
“This is the first time that a concerted collaborative effort involving top Dutch researchers and industrial players is being undertaken to improve coagulation diagnostics! The combination of up to date translational research and state-of-the-art industrial technology provides a strong basis for establishing new diagnostic tests that may better detect the risk of thrombosis and may also be suited to monitoring a range of new antithrombotic drugs.”
|
|
Prof. Dr. Hugo ten Cate obtained his MD and PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1987, followed by 15 years in research and clinical practice. In 2002 he was appointed Professor of Medicine for Clinical Thrombosis and Hemostasis at the Maastricht University. He is a board member of the Dutch Thrombosis Foundation and the Dutch Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Research (NVTH), and medical director of the Maastricht Thrombosis anticoagulation clinic. During his career, he has contributed to more than 180 papers in international journals and textbooks and is an editorial board member of the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, and Deputy Editor of Thrombosis Journal. His research focuses on the pathophysiology of thrombosis and inflammation-coagulation interactions in experimental models of disease as well as in clinical studies. He currently combines clinical and experimental research in his principal investigator position in the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), focusing on thrombosis in cardiovascular disease.
|
|
Industrial partners
-
Philips
-
Sanquin
-
Synapse BV
|
Academic partners
-
Academisch Medisch Centrum (AMC), Amsterdam, www.amc.uva.nl
-
Leids Universitair Centrum (LUMC), Leiden, www.lumc.nl
-
Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC), Maastricht, www.azm.nl/IDEE, IDEE/ Klinische Epidemiologie en Medical Technology Assessment (KEMTA)
-
|
General
In response to the first call for project proposals in 2007, the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) announced on April 1, 2008, that nine first-call projects would receive research funding amounting to a total of 150 million Euro. On March 10, 2009, it announced that eight new project proposals, submitted in the fall of 2008 in response to the second call for proposals, will receive funding amounting to a total of almost another 100 million Euro.
All Dutch university medical centers, plus several universities, a broad spectrum of small and medium-sized enterprises, major industry leaders including Philips and Schering-Plough, and the Dutch Government are involved.
The funding is provided by the Dutch government, industry and academia. The research is focused firmly on the ‘translational’ aspects of molecular medicine so that results can be applied as quickly as possible to actual patient care.
Eminence is one of the projects from the second call.
|
EMINENCE Project
Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. M.J. Post (Maastricht University Medical Centre)
The lack of neovascularization in ischemic disease typically marks the fatal progression of these conditions as well as the transition between potential success and failure of therapy. Ample pre-clinical proof of concept for successful therapeutic intervention with subsequent improvement of blood perfusion has already been demonstrated. Despite this, effective translation of neovascularization therapy into high volume patient care has still not occurred, most probably due to the lack of sensitive methods for detecting neovascularization, inadequate techniques for patient selection and ineffective delivery platforms for growth factor based therapies.
The Eminence project aims to develop multiple diagnostic technologies to enable the early and sensitive detection of neovascularization, and novel tools to stratify an individual patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease. It will build on previous experience to develop multi-modal and multi-valent contrast agents suitable for combined platform imaging. To accelerate translation into clinical practice, the project will design protocols to synthesize molecular ligands and label them with radionuclide isotopes and/or ultra-small-iron-oxide particles for use in combined MRI and PET/SPECT imaging. In addition to these molecular imaging approaches, the project will aim to improve functional MR imaging in order to assess the perfusional consequences of neovascularization by optimizing flow measurements for small arteries and quantifying cardiac and skeletal muscle perfusion.
Potential applications include atherosclerosis, heart failure, cancer, chronic inflammation and diabetic complications such as diabetic retinopathy or diabetes associated vascular disease.
|
|
|
Prof. Mark J. Post:
“National and international support for the EMINENCE consortium, together with the BMM partner program PENT, will foster new diagnostic techniques to assess blood supply to the heart or legs, thereby facilitating development of therapies to improve that blood supply.”
|
Prof. Dr. Mark Post received his medical degree and PhD from the University of Utrecht. After a period at the KNAW Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands, he was appointed full time assistant professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston (USA), where he continued research into neovascularization. He subsequently became associate professor of Medicine and Physiology at Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover (USA), later returning to the Netherlands as professor of Vascular Physiology at the Maastricht University and professor of Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineering at TU/e. He holds the Chair of Physiology and interim Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Maastricht University Medical Center and is vice dean of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at TU/e.
|
|
Industrial partners
|
Academic partners
|
|
|
|
|
|
General
In response to the first call for project proposals in 2007, the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) announced on April 1, 2008, that nine first-call projects would receive research funding amounting to a total of 150 million Euro. On March 10, 2009, it announced that eight new project proposals, submitted in the fall of 2008 in response to the second call for proposals, will receive funding amounting to a total of almost another 100 million Euro.
All Dutch university medical centers, plus several universities, a broad spectrum of small and medium-sized enterprises, major industry leaders including Philips and Schering-Plough, and the Dutch Government are involved.
The funding is provided by the Dutch government, industry and academia. The research is focused firmly on the ‘translational’ aspects of molecular medicine so that results can be applied as quickly as possible to actual patient care.
Parisk is one of the projects from the second call.
|
|
Assessment of Plaque at Risk by Non-invasive (Molecular) Imaging and Modeling (ParisK)
Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. Mat J.A.P. Daemen (Maastricht UMC+ / Maastricht University)
Rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque is the main cause of the clinical symptoms of cardiovascular diseases such as acute myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke. For a ‘plaque at risk’, the risk of rupture is determined by morphological, molecular, biological and biomechanical parameters of the plaque. Focusing on the carotid artery, the ParisK consortium will construct technological and translational platforms in which several novel imaging modalities will be advanced, validated and added to existing non-invasive imaging modalities to measure one or more parameters of plaque at risk. The data will be integrated to develop a novel heuristic algorithm that gives the predicted risk of rupture of an individual plaque, which will be validated in subsequent clinical studies.
|
|
|
Prof. Dr. Mat J.A.P. Daemen
“Since we know that acute cardiovascular events such as an acute myocardial infarction and stroke are caused by rupture of a vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque, there is a real need to develop tools, such as plaque imaging, that can predict plaque rupture. The ParisK consortium, which integrates the efforts of the top academic and industrial groups in the Netherlands working on plaque imaging, will translate the current molecular and biological knowledge of atherosclerosis into validated diagnostic imaging methods for detecting the risk of plaque rupture. As a result, it will accelerate the development of innovative products and solutions.”
|
|
Prof. Dr. Mat J.A.P. Daemen has expertise in the molecular regulation of plaque (in)stability and is professor and chairman of Pathology in the Maastricht University Medical Center. He is the Scientific Director of CARIM, the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht. He was one of the founding fathers of CTMM and a co-founder of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society and biotech company ACS Biomarkers. He is co-spokesman of the international graduate school EUCAR, a collaboration with the cardiovascular research Institute IMCAR in Aachen, and program leader the EU sponsored European Vascular Genomics Network and Cardiorisk.
|
|
Industrial partners
- Esaote
- Philips
- Pie Medical Imaging
- VisualSonics
|
Academic partners
- Erasmus Medisch Centrum (EMC), www.erasmusmc.nl
- Leids Universitair Centrum (LUMC), Leiden, www.lumc.nl
- Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC), Maastricht, www.azm.nl
- Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e), Eindhoven, www.tue.nl
- Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht,www.uu.nl
|
