Dr Renata Mężyk-Kopeć from the JU Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology Department of Cell Biochemistry will receive 1.3 million zlotys for a research project in the area of communication between cells in the body, to be carried out in collaboration with Prof. Tobias Langenhan from the German University of Leipzig (Rudolf Schönheimer Institut für Biochemie).
Polish and German scientists will be working on a project entitled Proteolytic modification of adhesive G protein-coupled receptors by proteases. They will focus on the recently isolated aGPCRs (adhesion G protein-coupled receptors), which regulate a number of important processes, such as cell migration, proliferation and differentiation. Disorders affecting these receptors can lead to the development of diseases of the nervous, immune and circulatory systems as well as of various types of cancer. Within the framework of the project, researchers will study the process of releasing NTF fragments of aGPCR receptors as a result of proteolysis carried out by extracellular proteases and the resulting effects. Depending on their findings, it may turn out that the proteases tested in the project may constitute potential new therapeutic targets in the treatment of diseases caused by impaired activation of aGPCR receptors.
The project was assessed by the German agency Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as the leading agency in the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP). Afterwards, the assessment was approved by the National Science Centre.
The Weave-UNISONO call is the result of multilateral cooperation between institutions financing scientific research, working within the framework of the Science Europe association. It was established to simplify the procedures for submitting and selecting research projects in all research areas which involve researchers from two or three European countries. Winning projects are chosen based on the lead agency's procedure, in accordance with which only one of the partner institutions is responsible for the full substantive assessment of the application, while the other partners need oly to approve the results of this assessment. As part of this programme, partner research teams submit applications for funding in parallel to the lead agency and to their respective institutions participating in the programme. The joint project must contain coherent research plans that clearly demonstrate the value of international cooperation.
