Project: Data-Driven Drug Discovery for Wound Healing
| Acronym | 4D-HEALING (Reference Number: JTC2_23) |
| Duration | 01/06/2018 - 31/12/2021 |
| Project Topic | The healing of wounds is a complex, multifactorial process that remains incompletely understood. Health providers inEurope face an increasing number of costly chronic wounds which profoundly affect patients' quality of life. Wound healingis highly dynamic and heterogeneous process, which impedes the dissection of the contribution of the different cell lineagesby bulk transcriptomics analysis. A static snapshot by single cell analyses might be uninformative. 4D-HEALING will map thefour spatiotemporal dimensions of human wound healing in an unprecedented way: the transcriptome of thousands of cellsfrom an in vivo monitored human wound will be analysed by RNAseq at single cell level. We will model the transcriptionaldynamics of cell lineages involved in all phases of healing, from injury to resolution. To gather positional information wepropose a novel computational tool to predict "cell docking", based on the probability of cell-to-cell interactions and producea neighbouring map that will be validated by annotating positional information of cells (multiplexed hybridizationapproach). The emerging knowledge will provide a 4D map of the cell types involved in human wound healing allowing us tocreate a dynamic mathematical model, to disentangle the crosstalk among cell signalling and interactions, transitionalstates and position during the healing process. These models integrated together with FDA-approved drug databases willpermit informed choices on molecular candidates that can be pharmacologically modulated. Candidate compounds will betested in ex vivo human skin organ cultures mimicking acute and chronic wound environments. The resulting leads willundergo standard drug development programs. The project will deliver data-driven, comprehensive understanding of thehuman wound healing process and in vitro proof of concept of a novel topical therapy to enhance chronic wound healing.Understanding wound healing will shed light to regenerative medicine. |
| Network | ERACoSysMed |
| Call | 2nd Joint Transnational Call for European Research Projects on Systems Medicine |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Biodonostia Health Research Institute | Coordinator | Spain |
| 2 | MONASTERIUM LABORATORY Skin & Hair Research Solutions GmbH | Partner | Germany |
| 3 | University of Ljubljana | Partner | Slovenia |
| 4 | Slovak Academy of Sciences | Partner | Slovakia |
| 5 | Medical University of Vienna | Partner | Austria |
| 6 | DEBRA Austria | Partner | Austria |
| 7 | University of Manchester | Observer | United Kingdom |
| 8 | European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) | Observer | United Kingdom |