Syn2Psy project receives funding from the European Commission
Research on neuropsychiatric diseases led by Coimbra receives 3.8 million euros
by Lusa
An international project to study neuropsychiatric diseases led by the University of Coimbra (UC) has received more than 3.8 million euros in funding from the European Commission, it was announced today.
The UC Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC) “received 3,885,000 euros from the European Commission to coordinate the international project ‘Syn2Psy’, a European network for advanced training in the study of cellular and molecular processes in neuropsychiatric diseases”, says the UC, in a note sent today to the Lusa agency.
‘Syn2Psy’, approved under the Marie Curie Actions program — funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program initiative, was “the only project led by a Portuguese institution in an international competition with more than 1,600 applications” and in which a “rate of approval success of only 7.4%” was recorded, points out the UC.
This network will bet, according to the institution, on “14 young scientists to investigate changes in brain development, synaptic plasticity and connectivity of neuronal circuits in diseases such as autism and schizophrenia”.
Ana Luísa Carvalho, project coordinator and professor at the Department of Life Sciences of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra, underlines, as quoted by the UC, that “this international study will contribute to identifying and signalling cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with neuropsychiatric diseases and, from there, open the possibility for the development of new therapies”.
The Portuguese team has the participation of the researchers Carlos Duarte, João Peça, Luísa Cortes, Paulo Pinheiro and Ramiro Almeida, from CNC.
The consortium also includes scientists from the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), the Interdisciplinary Institute of Neurosciences in Bordeaux and the Paris-Seine Biology Institute of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), the Centre of Integrative Physiology at the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College London (United Kingdom), refers the UC.
The network includes partnerships with the Coimbra University Hospital Centre (Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra – CHUC), the PIN/Progresso Infantil clinic and the companies Lundbeck, Eurotrials and Zeiss, they add.
The Marionet theatre company (created in 2000, in Coimbra) is also part of the project with the “innovative proposal to promote the training of young scientists in public communication”.
The European advanced training networks support training and research programs with an “innovative, international and intersectoral approach, with the perspective of improving the employability of scientists in Europe and in the world”.