News

"Marvel" project: towards scalable extracellular vesicles isolation

09/11/2020

Marvel logo
Marvel logo

The "Marvel" project (Evolving reversible immunocapture by membrane sensing peptides: towards scalable extracellular vesicles isolation) has kicked off on November 5th 2020 by a virtual meeting participated by all partners.

"Marvel" will run for 24 months and is funded with 1.8M euros within the frame of the  the EIC Transition to Innovation Activities call (FETPROACT-EIC-06-2019). The call was dedicated to promising technologies as they were at the end of a typical FET-Open or FET Proactive project (i.e., TRL 2/3) in order to bring them to that level of development, validation and demonstration where they became a credible basis for entrepreneurship, business creation, investment and, ultimately, economic and/or societal returns.

"Marvel" is coordinated by the 'Giulio Natta' Institute of Chemical Sciences and Technologies (Scitec), participated by the Institute for Membrane Technology - (Itm) and other 5 partners from 5 different countries: Università Vita-Salute san RaffaeleFondazione Cardiocentro TicinoPaperdrop DiagnosticsHansaBioMed Life Sciences and Amires.

The project is focused on extracellular vesicles (EV). Extracellular vesicles are membranous bio-particles released by any living cell. They are ubiquitously present in all biological fluids and perform intercellular communication. Extracellular vesicles can act as signalling vehicles in both physiological and pathological conditions, which makes them extensively useful for innovative methods in medicine and in crucial industrial sectors in biomedical applications.

"Marvel" aims to design robust, versatile, scalable and economically sustainable ways to upscale the technology for reversible EV isolation, developed within the ongoing FET-Open project INDEX, by merging it with peptide science and bring it to the market and broad professional users. "Marvel" wants to innovate diagnostic methods, e.g. the non-invasive liquid biopsy of bladder and cell-free therapeutic treatment of cardiovascular diseases, a leading cause of deaths in the world nowadays.

The main outcomes of "Marvel" will be lab-scale and point of need tools for urinary EV enrichment and analysis with unprecedented performances, enabling diagnosis of bladder cancer; and the first peptide-integrated TFF-affinity isolation system (i.e. a system based on tangential flow filtration)  which enables EV separation for therapeutic use on a GMP-grade and manufacturing scale.

"Marvel" expects to produce direct impacts on the field of EVs by empowering the sustainability of their use in both regenerative medicine and in many diagnostics workflows. Such empowerment is expected to increment readiness level of EV technologies and endow them with clinical grade maturity. This will ultimately impact society by providing better clinical outcomes at lower costs through the precision medicine paradigm with implications on life quality and sustainability of public healthcare.

Per informazioni:
Martina Cretich
Cnr - Scitec
marina.cretich@scitec.cnr.it
Communication and dissemination is by the Scitec Teams: Third Mission Activities in 3d and Social Team - Ref Michela Tassistro mob. 3393044672

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