Throughout 6th-8th November 2024, EU Fet Open PRIME consortium partners from across Europe travelled to northern Italy, coming together for the 7th Plenary of the project, held at University of Ferrara (UniFE.)
This in-person, two-day meeting, provided the opportunity for project partners to meet face-to-face to hold collaborative discussions on project progress, share recent results, deep-dive new ideas, mitigate potential risks and make plans for next steps across the upcoming work package deliverables.
The beautiful city of Ferrara proved a stunning location to spend a few days, and in the evening time partners enjoyed exploring the historical sights during a city tour, tasting the delicious local cuisine, and networking with stakeholders and representatives at the university.
What was covered at the Plenary?
- The opportunity for PIs and researchers to each present Work Package updates and discuss output since the project’s last Plenary and European Commission Review.
- In-depth discussions of results coming from synergies and collaborations built across the partner groups which constitute useful research output.
- Work package leads presented their ongoing research work, that addresses key project objectives, at this critical stage in the timeline. Work packages covered:
- WP1- Project Coordination and Management
- WP2- Development of Integrated AI and MC Simulation and Modeling Tools
- WP3- Engineering Mammalian Cells with Molecular Computing Functions
- WP4- Integrated Structure of Implantable Membrane Encapsulation and Microenvironment for Bio-computing ARPE-19 Cells.
- WP5- Preclinical Experimental Testing and Validation Platform
- WP6- Exploitation and Dissemination
- An overview of communication and dissemination activities to date with a look forward at future activities, and a management overview of the project including current status, milestones achieved, upcoming deliverables and next step requirements.
PRIME partners came away from the Plenary invigorated for the tasks ahead, with agreed actions for next steps in research as we near this critical period of the final months of the PRIME project.
EU Fet Open PRIME project: “A Personalized Living Cell Synthetic Computing Circuit for Sensing and Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders.” PRIME’s grand vision is to develop an autonomous implantable living cell system with engineered bio-computing logic gate (AND, OR gates) that sense, compute, and actuate epileptic seizure suppression. These cells will be implanted into the brain and will co-exist with natural neural tissue.
Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, working to achieve the PRIME project objectives are researchers from 7 partners across Europe, bringing together a strong multi-disciplinary team.
