Archives: Projekti

IMI projekti

EDIAQI – Evidence Driven Indoor Air Quality Improvement

Consortium leader: Francesco Mureddu

Work package (WP5) leader: Goran Gajski

Participants (IMI): Gordana Pehnec, Marko Gerić, Ivana Jakovljević, Silvije Davila, Iva Šimić, Mirta Milić, Vilena Kašuba, Katarina Matković, Ivana Vrhovac Madunić, Dean Karaica, Maja Nikolić, Luka Kazensky, Vedran Micek, Davorka Breljak, Tajana Horvat i Marija Jelena Lovrić

Programme: HORIZON

Call: HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-02

Duration: 01.12.2022. – 30.11.2026.

Abstract: Indoor air pollution, an emerging threat recognized by European society, is claiming millions of lives annually. In the heat of current COVID-19 pandemic, elevated exposure to indoor air pollutants due to increased time spent indoors further faces a significant increase in negative effect on both physical and mental health and well-being not only in Europe, but also worldwide. When it comes to indoor air quality itself, serious knowledge gaps remain in understanding complex nature of indoor-outdoor pollution relationships, pollution sources and exposure pathways, health effects of emerging pollutants, ventilation of indoor spaces on wide spatial and long temporal scales. This is mainly because air quality monitoring in European Union (EU) is primarily focused on outdoor air quality, which paradoxically is a result of regulatory target compliances, which is lacking for indoor environments. To increase the resilience of EU for emerging threats of indoor air pollution and to promote living and working in healthy environments, project EDIAQI aims at conducting characterization of sources and routes of exposure and dispersion of chemical, biological, and emerging indoor air pollution in multiple cities in EU. Quantification of the main properties of pollutants and processes that governs its fate in indoor environments will be investigated on two levels: a) the-state-of-the-art, small-scale, high-intensity scientific focus measurement campaigns; and b) long-term, large-scale monitoring of target indoor air pollutants. The chosen project strategy for developing, characterization, and deployment of cost-effective/user-friendly monitoring solutions, together with the-state-of-the-art scientific instrumentation will allow to create new knowledge on sources, routes of exposure, and body burdens of indoor multipollutant.

Link: https://ediaqi.eu/

ToxLearn4EU – Toxicology Innovative Learning For Europe

Project leader: Bertrand Pourrut (France)

IMI Participants: Mirta Milić, Marko Gerić, Goran Gajski

Programme: Erasmus+

Action Type:  KA220-HED – Cooperation partnerships in higher education

Field: Higher Education

Duration: 31.1.2022. – 31.1.2025.

Objectives: The Erasmus ToxLearn4EU project was built by a consortium of 7 HEIs and 3 research centres and laboratory. It aims to modernize of Toxicology and Ecotoxicology teaching in Europe and has several objectives and target audiences:

  • develop and use innovative and free educational resources  interactive courses, online PBL) in order to develop high quality digital education
  • provide innovative content on current hot topics in the field of Toxicology/Ecotoxicology to fit with recent evolution of European Policy (Action Plan: ‘Towards Zero Pollution’) and with job market needs
  • stimulate interest of students for those fields and limit school dropout by putting students back at the centre of teaching through the use of active pedagogies adapted to digital practice to recreate interactions between students, between students and teachers, and by stimulating their motivation through playful approaches.

The project meets the needs of:

  • students by stimulating their interest and limiting school dropout, putting them back at the centre of teaching through the use of active pedagogies adapted to digital practice to recreate interactions between students, between students and teachers, and by stimulating their motivation through playful approaches.
  • teachers by proposing stimulating online courses which can be integrated in their own courses, or by motivating them to design and create their own new innovative courses.
  • partners by modernizing part of their curricula.
  • stakeholders of toxicology and ecotoxicology by developing student and lifelong learner competencies adapted to job market and up-to-date to recent changes at the European Level (Green Deal)
  • European Commission by modifying curricula and developing courses adapted to the Green Deal. This will contribute to reach the ambitious objectives of EU Action Plan Towards Zero Pollution.

    https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/hr

Identifying interactions of renal and hepatic organic cation transporters (OCTs) with oximes, antidotes in treatment of organophosphate poisoning

Croatian-German Scientific Research Project funded by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Project leaders:

Ivana Vrhovac Madunić (Croatian leader), IMROH

Mladen V. Tzvetkov (German leader), University of Medicine, Greifswald

Project participants: Maja Katalinić, Josip Madunić, Zrinka Kovarik, Antonio Zandona, Tena Čadež, Marleen Meyer, Sarah Rőmer

Duration: 2022/2023

Oximes as potential inhibitors glucose transfer in prostate cancer cells

Project leader: Ivana Vrhovac Madunić

Project participants: Maja Katalinić, Josip Madunić, Dean Karaica, Antonio Zandona, Ana-Marija Lulić

Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Duration: 2021-2022

Summary

The aim of this project is to determine whether newly synthesized oxime compounds inhibit glucose uptake and thus the growth of human prostate cancer cells and as such can be considered as candidates for antitumor drugs. Most of the newly synthesized oximes that will be examined are either constantly positively charged quaternary amines, or contain amino groups that could be strongly protonated under physiological conditions.

Correlated Multimodal Imaging in Life Sciences (COMULIS)

COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology

Suradnici na projektu:

Ivana Vrhovac Madunić – MC member (Management Committee)

– Grant Awarding Coordinator

– Coordinator for Grant Awarding ITC (Inclusiveness Target

                                             Countries)

Dean Karaica – MC member (Management Committee)

Link: https://www.comulis.eu/about-cost

Duration: 2018-2022

Project leader (MC Chair): Andreas Walter

Sažetak: The network aims at fueling urgently needed collaborations in the field of correlated multimodal imaging (CMI), promoting and disseminating its benefits through showcase pipelines, and paving the way for its technological advancement and implementation as a versatile tool in biological and preclinical research. CMI combines two or more imaging modalities to gather information about the same specimen. It creates a composite view of the sample with multidimensional information about its macro-, meso- and microscopic structure, dynamics, function and chemical composition. Since no single imaging technique can reveal all these details, CMI is the only way to understand biomedical processes and diseases mechanistically and holistically. CMI relies on the joint multidisciplinary expertise from biologists, physicists, chemists, clinicians and computer scientists, and depends on coordinated activities and knowledge transfer between academia and industry, and instrument developers and users. Due to its inherently multidisciplinary and cross-functional nature, an interdisciplinary network such as this Action is indispensable for the success of CMI. Nevertheless, there is currently no European network in the field. Existing scattered efforts focus on correlated light and electron microscopy or (pre)clinical hybrid imaging. This Action will consolidate these efforts, establish commonly-accepted protocols and quality standards for existing CMI approaches, identify and showcase novel CMI pipelines, bridge the gap between preclinical and biological imaging, and foster correlation software through networking, workshops and open databases. The network will raise awareness for CMI, train researchers in multimodal approaches, and work towards a scientific mindset that is enthusiastic about interdisciplinary imaging approaches in life sciences.

Analysis of organic pollutants in biological systems and the environment

Regardless of the fact that polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been explored widely over the past several decades, the determination of their environmental distribution and impact on human health are intensively present in scientific research around the world. PAHs are a complex group of pollutants formed by the incomplete combustion of organic material. Many countries around the world, including Croatia, monitor ambient air quality through their monitoring networks, used for implementing emission reduction measures. POPs are compounds characterised by persistence, bioaccumulation, toxicity, and long range transport via air. In order to prevent or reduce the release of POPs into the environment, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was introduced. The Convention entered into force in 2004, and in 2006 the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia declared the Act on the Ratification of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (OG-11/2006). Among other things, the Convention prescribes the monitoring of POPs in the biotic and abiotic parts of the environment.

Cooperation with AQUATIKA has begun on this project, which adds to the long-term collaborations of researchers from Croatia (Department of Health Studies, University of Zadar; IMROH) and Serbia (Institute of Physics Belgrade; University of Belgrade, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade; Vinča Institute of Nuclear Science).

IMROH

  • Environmental Hygiene Unit,

Iva Šimić, Ivana Jakovljević, Gordana Pehnec

  • Biochemistry and Organic Analytical Chemistry Unit

Snježana Herceg Romanić, Gordana Mendaš Starčević, Sanja Stipičević, Sanja Fingler, Darija Klinčić, Marija Dvorščak, Nikolina Medved

Department of Health Studies, University of Zadar

Marijana Matek Sarić

AQUATIKA-FRESHWATER AQUARIUM KARLOVAC

Goran Jakšić

Vinča Institute of Nuclear Science, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade Laboratory for Radioisotopes

Dalibor Stanković

Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade

  • Department of Applied Chemistry

Aleksandar Popović

Institute of Physics Belgrade, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia

  • Environmental Physics Laboratory

Gordana Jovanović, Tijana Milićević

Development of analytical methods for obtaining the first data on human exposure in Croatia to brominated compounds

Foundation of the Croatian Academy for Sciences and Arts

Duration: 2020 – 2021

Summary

The aim of this project is to optimize the conditions for microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) of 7 polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners from human milk samples by selecting a suitable solvent mixture, temperature, and the required time for extraction. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of human milk sample pretreatment on the MAE efficiency. This will be the first application of MAE technique for extraction of PBDEs from human milk samples in the world, and the preliminary data on PBDEs mass fractions in human milk from Croatia, which will enable assessment of Croatian population exposure to PBDEs, and based on which it will be possible to assess the potential risk to human health.

Effect of oxime analogues on skeletal muscle cell viability

Ministry of Science and Education, Croatian-Slovenian bilateral cooperation, 2020.-2021.

Project head:

Head from the Slovenian institution:

  • Sergej Pirkmajer, Ljubljana, Institute of Pathophysiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Participating researchers (IMROH):

Partipicants from the Slovenian institution (PAFI):

  • Tomaž Marš
  • Katarina Miš
  • Klemen Dolinar
  • Vid Jan

 

Safe-by-Design Approach for Development of Nano-Enabled-Delivery Systems to Target the Brain – SENDER

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The ultimate goal of proposed project is development of multifunctional nano-enabled drug delivery systems for brain (BRaiND) for efficient and safe treatment of abnormalities that follow debilitating brain conditions linked to aging and degeneration.  This will be achieved by following specific objectives:

– design, preparation and characterization of BRaiND;

– evaluation of BRaiND stability and fate in biological media;

– mechanistic and quantitative assessment of interaction of BRaiND with BBB;

– efficacy and safety profiling of BRaiND by a combined in vitro and in vivo approach.

BRaiND will be based on selenium or gold NPs, stabilized with polyethylene gylcol and functionalized with proteins that target the brain receptors. Such multifunctionalized system will be loaded with model neuroactive agents to demonstrate its efficacy, quality and safety. Careful in vitro and in vivo testings will be performed including stability and interactions of BRaiND in different biological media, BBB permeability, and efficacy of targeting specific brain sites, neuroprotective activity, and safety profiling. SENDER work plan is based on validated and standardized methodologies, as well as emerging new experimental techniques.

Considering the major challenges of translational research in neurodegenerative diseases, SENDER strategy is based on the Safe-by-Design approach and enabled by nanotechnological tools that analyze and manipulate biological processes at the nanoscale, where diseases initiate and progress.

PROJECT CONCEPT