EU funds STEM-CORE MSCA with more than four million euros

As part of Horizon Europe, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are the European Union's flagship funding programs for doctoral training and contribute to building Europe's research and innovation capacity by investing in the long-term careers of excellent researchers.

The STEM-CORE (Stem Cell Therapy Development for Corneal Epithelium Regeneration) project has ten academic partners in nine EU countries and has two objectives: To support young scientists and to develop new, safe therapeutic approaches using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiLSCs) for blinding ocular stem cell diseases.

To meet the demand for young talent in ocular stem cell research, STEM-CORE will provide comprehensive training for the next generation of (biomedical) researchers. This will provide them with the complete tools for innovation and careers in ocular regenerative medicine and beyond.

The second goal is to generate stem cells that match or even enhance the regenerative capacity of LSCs, thus providing a solution for the treatment of various forms of ocular limbal deficiency that otherwise lead to blindness. STEM-CORE aims to develop and characterize robust hiLSCs that will form the basis of an affordable and sustainable cell therapy for the treatment of corneal blindness caused by stem cell deficiency.

The project leaders, Dr. Maria Notara and Prof. Dr. Claus Cursiefen, are both TP leaders in the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1607 in Ophthalmology. Professor Cursiefen is also Executive Board Menber at the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC, University of Cologne), Dr. Notara was awardee in the CAP program (Career Advancement Program) and still is associated principal investigator at the CMMC. "The projects of the SFB 1607 and the stem cell research in STEM-CORE will positively influence each other", says Professor Cursiefen, spokesperson of the CRC. "The MSCA projects in Cologne will focus on the immunological aspects of stem cell transplantation in various eye diseases," adds Dr. Notara, co-leader of the proposal.

Scientific contact
Professor Dr. Claus Cursiefen 
augenklinik-chefarztsekretariat@uk-koeln.de
Dr. Maria Notara
maria.notara[at]uk-koeln.de

This message has been modified by the CMMC (K. Heber & D. Grosskopf-Kroiher) and is based on the text by the press and communications team University Hospital of Cologne (original version in German here).