On 29-31 Jan 2025 the 4th Consortium meeting of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) project ivBM-4PAP was held in person hosted by Prof. David Rousseau, head of the Laboratoire LARIS at Université d'Angers.

The meeting also hosted the upcoming new partner in the Consortium, Universidade de Coimbra (𝐔𝐂), in the persons of Prof.  Maria Rosário Almeida, Senior Investigator in human genetics at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology CNC, and her colleague Prof. Isabel Santana, PI of the Neuropsychology Laboratory and Dementia Clinic at the Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra (CHUC). UC will join very soon the ongoing ivBM-4PAP project thanks to the Hop On Facility Call within the Programme Horizon Europe 2023-2024.

The Micro4PAP project is almost arrived to its mid way! The Consortium met online last week to give updates on the scientific results expected for the second year.

Léo Brechet, PhD at the Université D'Angers, our French partner in the ivBM-4PAP project, presented the latest advance in smart scanning methods for Brillouin Microscopy at EUSIPCO 2024, the main European Signal Processing conference.

Last week Dr. Claudia Testi (post doc at IIT and involved in the ivBM-4PAP project) attended the 7th International BioBrillouin conference in Trondheim, Norway (11-13 September 2024). She presented her results, obtained in collaboration with IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital (Milan) on the use of Brillouin Microscopy in the characterization of mechanical features of murine bladder in a pathological condition, i.e. actinic cystitis. This work represents an additional step towards the main objective of the ivBM-4PAP project: Brillouin microscope as the only diagnostic tool with a fast, non-contact, label-free method with micrometric resolution for earlier detection of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases.
For more information on the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-51006-2.

As part of the Biophysics Week (https://www.biophysics.org/biophysics-week#/), an activity called ‘The Biophyzza Connection’ took place at the Agri-Food Market at the San Francisco Campus in Zaragoza.
The event, supported by the European project ivBM-4PAP, consisted of two informal talks by two researchers from the Institute of Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI): Dr. Nunilo Cremades (ivBM-4PAP partner) and Dr. Javier García-Nafría.

The error of man, the error of the machine. Making mistakes is a necessary step to learning. It applies to human beings as well as to the models training the neural networks on which algorithms and artificial intelligence are based. Recognizing and managing errors is therefore an important step, both in basic research and in its applications, such as medical research. But what if the error is made when choosing the data to train the machines with? And how are these errors identified and corrected? Prof. Giancarlo Ruocco (ivBM-4PAP Coordinator) together with other scientists and experts will answer these and other questions at the Festival Delle Scienze on 21th April at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome.

The first ivBM-4PAP review meeting was held online and successfully concluded on the 10th of April 2024! The project results have been presented via individual workpackages in a very friendly atmosphere to the project officer and technical reviewers. The project execution paradigm didn't need to be changed as all the planned milestones, results and deliverables for the first reporting period have been successfully reached. The consortium is already working on the next deliverables to be addresed. Congratulations to the whole team!

Our researchers Michele Monti and Jonathan Fiorentino (post-docs at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in the RNA Systems Biology lab directed by Gian Gaetano Tartaglia) recently joined the conference “Physics of Biomolecules: Structure, Dynamics and Function” (https://lnkd.in/dDYBywHU) in Bressanone (Italy) with two invited talks. 

The second ivBM-4PAP Consortium meeting was held in Zaragoza, on 31^nd Jan-1^st Feb 2024, hosted by Prof. Nunilo Cremades at the Institute of Biocomputing and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI) of the University of Zaragoza.

In the first day, both scientific and management sessions were discussed. Basically, all the partners presented their scientific activities reached in the first Reporting Period (Month 12, i.e. 29^th February 2024) based on the Grant Agreement signed with the EU Commission. As expected, all the tasks were carried out as planned in due time. In the following session (management), the guidelines and deadlines for planning the work on the 1^st ivBM-4PAP Periodic Report to the EU Commission were shared with the Consortium by the IIT project management staff aimed at creating a smooth coordination among the partners to achieve the final goal in the due date, i.e. 31th March 2024.

The next Consortium Appointment will be the 1^st Review Meeting (online) with the ivBM-4PAP Project Officer (PO) and external experts for evaluating the scientific work, the project impact (from the scientific, technological, economic and social points of view) and the management procedures carried out in this first year of action.

On 29 September, the Consortium of the ivBM-4PAP project met online to examine the state-of-play of ongoing project activities, six months after its kick-off.

The meeting was divided into two sessions. In the first one, the PIs shared their advancements based on the project’s achievements to be reached within the end of the first Reporting Period (i.e. February 2024). The following session focused on financial management, dissemination, exploitation and communication strategies/activities planned in the first year of the project. Overall, the project is running smoothly and the partners headed back with the good perspective of being in the right way for achieving the 1^st year project tasks in due time.

The next Consortium Meeting is planned to be held in person on January 2024 at Zaragoza (Spain).

The group led by Nunilo Cremades at the BIFI Institute of the University of Zaragoza will contribute its experience in protein aggregation processes associated with neurodegenerative diseases in order to identify new methods for diagnosing these diseases through the use of Micro4PAP.

The BIFI researcher at the University of Zaragoza is part of the international team that has achieved European funding of €3M for the European project ivBM-4PAP The new device will facilitate the understanding of both physiological and pathological processes, such as those involved in neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases.

Researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia are working on a new generation of microscopes for in-vivo imaging of cell mechanical properties. Micro4PAP is a promising tool for clinical-oriented research, enhancing the capability for early disease detection, diagnosis, and therapy.