The lunch of VES4US H2020 FETOPEN project: Extracellular vesicles from a natural source for tailor-made nanomaterials
VES4US is a new European project funded by the FETOPEN call of Horizon2020 Programme that aims to develop a radically new platform for the efficient production and functionalisation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) from a sustainable bioresource, enabling their exploitation as tailor-made products in the fields of nanomedicine, cosmetics and nutraceutics. This could allow the development of natural nanocarriers with unprecedented abilities for drug delivery in specific tissues such as brain, lung, skin, dendritic or tumour cells.
This project was launched in Palermo the 20th and 21stof September 2018 and counted with the assistance of all the members of the consortium and main important personalities in town as well as renown researchers and industrial representatives.
VES4US has a total budget of 2.946.303.75€ with the EU contribution. The project will run for the next three years with 6 organizations from 6 European countries.
Safe, efficient and specific nano-delivery systems are essential to current therapeutic medicine, cosmetic and nutraceutics sectors. The ability to optimise the bioavailability, stability, and targeted cellular uptake of a bioactive molecule while mitigating toxicity, immunogenicity and off-target/side effects is of the utmost priority. VES4US aims at creating a fundamentally new bioprocessing approach to generate and functionalise EVs from a renewable biological source using the state-of-the-art technologies.
VES4US, will start by doing a selection of EVs-producing natural source strains that at last, will get to the production of the EVs needed to develop the natural nanocarriers with the abilities for molecular delivery in specific tissues. Before that happens, it exists the need of doing a good research practice in a way to discover and define which will be the material needed to develop this research. This will be aided by an in-depth physiochemical biological and toxicological characterization of the natural, the specific cargo enriched and the functionalized EVs and their large-scale production using a new extraction procedure.
The Ves4us consortium is professional and consists of 5 research centers and universities and 1 consultancy firm. The group is led by CNR (Italy). The other partners are: Institute of Technology Sligo (Ireland), ETH Zürich (Switzerland), Univerza V Ljubljani (Slovenia), MPG (Germany) and ZABALA Innovation Consulting (Spain). CNR is participating with 5 institutes: IBIM, IBF, EOS, IGB and IBBR.
The two research groups from IBBR-CNR, division of Naples, have a fundamental role in the success of the project. The Mass spectrometry and Proteomics Group of IBBR-CNR led by Gabriella Pocsfalvi (member of VES4US Steering Committee) is responsible for the overall supervision of WP2 related to the “Production of natural source derived EVs”, as well as for the Task 3.3 “Characterisation of protein and small molecular biocargo of vesicles”; and the C. elegans Group of IBBR-CNR led by Elia di Schiavi is responsible for Task 5.3 “Invertebrate in vivo assays”. The IBBR-CNR has a budget of 380.000 Euro to dedicate for the successful completion of these tasks, which are very important for the VES4US project’s objectives.
For more information:
Antonella Bongiovanni (IBIM-CNR)
Coordinator of VES4US
E • antonella.bongiovanni@ibim.cnr.it
Gabriella Pocsfalvi (IBBR-CNR)
Member of VES4US Steering Comitee
E • gabriella.pocsfalvi@ibbr.cnr.it
T •+39 0816132585 T • +39 3355607140
Elia Di Schiavi (IBBR-CNR)
E • elia.dischiavi@ibbr.cnr.it
T •+39 0816132365
See WEB site of the project: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/216332_it.html
