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.
On 25th – 26th January 2024, representatives of the consortium of partners traveled to host partner University of Tampere, Finland, to participate in the 6th PRIME project plenary. The in-person two-day meeting offered the opportunity for project partners to come together face-to-face not only to discuss the project, deliver updates and share recent results, but also to explore one of the European partner locations, visiting the fantastic sights and enjoying local cuisine, during evening downtime. Tampere, an inland city in southern Finland, provided a stunning backdrop this January, with snow-covered ground and temperatures reaching -12 degrees. The team also had the opportunity to tour the impressive on-site lab facilities at the university.
What was covered at the plenary?
- The opportunity to present and discuss the updates and actions that have taken place since the project’s European Commission Review 2 in November 2023.
- An in-depth workshop to establish the project’s Innovation Radar and potential key exploitable results (KERs) at this stage; identifying the KERs attributable per partner, and those where potential joint applications may be made.
- Work package leaders presented their ongoing research work, that addresses key project objectives, at this critical stage in the timeline. This included updates on optimisations on RNA seqeuncing, the molecular communications model, engineering mammalian cells with molecular computing fuctions, preclinical experimental testing and validation platforms.
- 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, and delighted to have had two days discussion time with fellow partners, to kick start 2024. With plenty of research to be continued, the team is looking forward to progressing work towards achieving the project objectives.
PRIME partners:
Led by Walton Institute at South East Technological University, PRIME project’s consortium of European partners is made up of Tampere University Finland, University of Ferrera Italy, EPOS-IASIS Cyprus, Aarhus University Denmark, Omiics ApS Denmark and Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) Ireland.
