Screening of inflammation to enable personalized medicine
SciFiMed aims to help patients suffering from impaired defence against infections, incurable renal, autoimmune or eye diseases. All these diseases share an association with dysregulation of the complement system, which is a major component of the immune system.
SciFiMed will investigate the pathophysiology of the FH-protein family, to enable the development of personalized, radically new on-time diagnostics, which allow improved patient stratification for prospective cohort studies to understand complement-associated diseases.
Complement factor H (FH) and FH-related (FHR) proteins are components of the complement system that are strongly associated with systemic and organ-specific complement-mediated pathologies. In contrast to FH, the function of the remaining six highly homologous FHR proteins is mostly unknown and, hence, their role in the different disease-specific pathogenic mechanisms remain elusive. The SciFiMed consortium will unravel the mysteries of the FH-protein family’s contributions to diseases. Then, via an ambitious and transdisciplinary fundamental science-to-technology transfer, a proof-of-principle for a multiplex detection system will be developed to simultaneously quantify and analyse the functional activity of all seven FH-protein family members in patient samples – on site, putting diagnostic technology directly into physicians’ hands. In the future, this high-impact project propels immunological research in Europe, enables new product development of bioanalytical companies, modernizes the EU-diagnostic market and provides new perspectives for patient treatment, which in turn will pave the way for novel approaches for drug development.
Coordinator:Philipps-Universität Marburg, DE
Partners:
- Universität Regensburg, DE
- Complutense University of Madrid, ES
- Sanquin Research, NL
- Eötvös Loránd University, HU
- University Medical Center Groningen, NL
- Hycult Biotech, NL
- Microcoat Biotechnology GmbH, DE
