Amaia Arranz Mendiguren to develop hASTROCURE, an ambitious project funded by ERC Consolidator Grant.
The European Research Council has awarded one of its prestigious ERC Consolidator Grants 2024 to a project aiming to understand the contribution of human astrocytes to Alzheimer´s disease
Dr. Amaia Arranz Mendiguren, currently Ramon y Cajal and Ikerbasque Research Associate at ACHUCARRO and leading the Laboratory of Humanized Models of Disease, has been awarded with an ERC Consolidator Grant 2024. The project hASTROCURE is funded with 2 million euros, and will be developed during 5 years.
The pathogenesis of Alzheimer´s disease is not fully understood and no cure is available so far. Current therapeutic targets are insufficient and there is an urgent need for finding new pathways and mechanisms and novel targets to treat this terrible disease. Rodent models of Alzheimer’s disease are widely used in research and have provided essential information about specific aspects of the disease. But due to critical differences between humans and mice and the limitations of these rodent models, human-based models are necessary to capture the complexity of the disease process. hASTROCURE proposes to investigate with a multidisciplinary approach human astrocytes, integral components of the brain and understudied in Alzheimer’s disease. This project will go beyond the state-of-the-art providing groundbreaking information about human astrocytes and their contribution to Alzheimer’s disease, and will help to define new therapeutic strategies for the disease.
Dr. Arranz said, “I am very excited about this project and tremendously grateful to my research team, former team members, colleagues at ACHUCARRO and Ikerbasque, collaborators and colleagues from the scientific community, supervisors and mentors throughout my career, and of course to my family. This would not have been possible without the support of all these people”.
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