March 2023: Nachman awarded ERC grant

Congratulations to Dr. Iftach Nachman, Edmond J. Safra member (Life Sciences), and colleagues, who won the European Research Council (ERC) Grant, one of the most prominent European research grants for collaborative research.  

The European Innovation Council Pathfinder Challenges program announced a 4.95M Euro funding to Dr. Iftach Nachman who leads the Israeli research team, as part of an international consortium from six countries for the development of the Supervised Morphogenesis in Gastruloids (SUMO) project.
As part of the SUMO project, the researchers develop embryo like models (called 'gastruloids') based on pluripotent stem cells, to mimic cardiac and gastric tissues. With the help of advanced microscopy and machine learning, the consortium aims to make the gastruloids more robust and reproducible. The researchers hope that these models could be implemented in drug scanning and study of mutations in the future, and thus be a viable substitute to the use of lab animals.

The SUMO consortium unites researchers from Oslo University Hospital, Norway (HTH director: Stefan Krauss, coordinator), Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) (Jesse Veenvliet), Imperial College London, UK (HTH PI: Molly Stevens), University of Glasgow, UK (HTH PI: Nikolaj Gadegaard), Tel Aviv University, Israel (Iftach Nachman), Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), Germany (Jens von Kries) and University of Oslo (HTH PI: Jan Helge Solbakk).