Research conducted by Prof. Stefan Chłopicki’s team at the Jagiellonian Centre For Experimental Therapeutics will receive a grant worth almost 3.5 million PLN awarded by the National Science Centre (NSC) as part of the Weave-UNISONO competition. The grant will be used to fund research into sepsis, within the framework of the project ‘Specific aging-related pathomechanisms of endothelium dysfunctions in sepsis: mechanisms investigation and experimental treatment’.
Sepsis is a life-threatening systemic inflammatory response. Septic shock usually leads to much more serious health consequences in older patients. Prof. Chłopicki’s team from the Jagiellonian Centre for Experimental Therapeutics would like to find out why this happens.
Endothelium dysfunction significantly contributes to the pathophysiology of septic shock and multiorgan damage caused by sepsis. The latest research carried out by the grant winners and other groups provide key evidence showing that proinflammatory and oxidative factors cause a much higher level of endothelium dysfunction in blood vessels of older rats and mice compared to the younger animals, The project is expected to shed new light on pharmacotherapeutic mechanisms responsible for sepsis-related endothelium dysfunction that aggravates with age. The topic poses a serious challenge in medicine, because so far there has been no pharmacological approach to circulatory shock and multiorgan damage in sepsis.
Weave-UNISONO is a competition for international research projects of extraordinary scientific value. It is part of the Weave programme aimed at simplifying the procedure of submitting and selecting projects involving researchers from two or three European countries or regions. The international projects are evaluated by a single institution – the lead agency – relevant for one of the teams participating in the project, in the call that constitutes a permanent element of such agency’s offer..
In the case of the project featuring Prof. Chłopicki’s team, the lead agency was the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), because the Swiss partner in the project was indicated as the coordinating applicant by all research teams involved. The lead agency (SNSF) presented the recommended projects, selected based on its won evaluation, to the National Science Centre. Thanks to such simplified procedures, Weave allows researchers to engage in international collaboration in a way they themselves consider best suited to the needs of their projects.
