19-23 June 2023, Prague Czech Republic
Conference Grants are aimed at supporting young researchers from participating ITC to attend international science and technology related conferences not specifically organised by the COST Action. The applicant must make an oral / poster presentation at the conference in question and must be listed in the official event / conference programme. The main subject of the oral presentation / poster presentation / speech at the approved conference must be on the topic of the Action and must acknowledge COST.
During the Grant Period 2 two ITC conference grants were realized:
This WG Meeting covered Working Group 1 – Biophysics of cell and tissue structure, Working Group 2 – Structural analysis of biomolecules involved in mechanobiology, Working Group 3 – New methodologies to study mechanobiology of cells and tissues and Working Group 4 – Mechanobiological principles of rare and common diseases. The meeting took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the University of Thessaloniki.
The meeting focused on discuss possibilities, and identify specific topics for collaborative proposals, spanning all WGs of the Action in the area of 3D Bioprinting. More specifically, to examine the fate and integrity of the embedded stem cells during and after the process. The outcome of this one-day brain-storming was shared with all members of all WGs for further action. The meeting attend 13 participants, 5 of them were members of the Action.
This WG Meeting covered Working Group 1 – Biophysics of cell and tissue structure, and Working Group 3 – New methodologies to study mechanobiology of cell and tissues. The meeting focused on coordinate and design the activity between relevant European groups involved in structural analysis of mechano-response cellular machineries to provide the organization of cytoskeleton related and nuclear related proteins and assemblies. The meeting took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the Faculty of Medicine.
Common goal was be to study the mechano properties of the nucleoskeleton, cytoskeleton, focal adhesion and extracellular matrix in skin cells from the human and mouse, to use established models of human/mouse wound healing, and to use this information to determine the roles of individual molecular components in responding to mechanical strain and in activating mechano response pathways.
The meeting started with a short introduction of all participants, so to present their work and interest in the wound healing area. This was followed by a round table discussion, to brain storm and structure one or more future projects that we could collaborate on. Finally, a dedicated session explored available funding calls and strategy on how to obtain funding (who leads which call, partners, objectives, etc.), as well as the strategy to make this happen within the COST network.
The meeting was focused on aging – an inevitable biological process. Unravelling the fundamental molecular mechanism of aging and longevity is a pre-requisite for developing appropriate means of increasing “healthy lifespan”. The meeting took place in Athens, Greece at the National Hellenic Research Foundation. Organizer anticipated approximately 250 participants in total including about 50 young scientists. There were 4 plenary lectures as well as approximately 40 presentations in emerging areas of aging research by internationally leading scientists. Moreover, the Meeting had a EuroCellNet session, where 3 COST Action members presented their data. To this end EuroCellNet COST Action Members (as well as all Meeting´s participants) had the opportunity disseminating their work to a broad and international audience and experts.
Management Committee Members decided to meet at Frankfurt airport to facilitate the discussion of all Action aspects. Date was specified on the 12th October 2018. Grant Period Goals were following:
A workshop to improved researchers skills, conferences (senior researchers) and a symposium for selected oral presentations (young researchers). The senior researchers that participate in the conference were the mentors of the young researchers that participated in the workshop and in the symposium.
Science Xpression Workshop (26 -28 September) was recommended for graduate/PhD students and postdocs. This workshop had three primary goals: (1) to practice giving oral presentations, (2) to practice writing abstracts that describe research interests and progress and (3) to develop communication skills. Through this process, participants were broaden their scientific horizons and enhance their ability to give presentations, write abstracts, and respond to questions and comments from others.
The School included the following sessions: Nuclear lamina & nuclear dynamics, Structural aspects of the nucleus, Nuclear Mechanics, Laminopathies, DNA repair and lamins, Cytoplasmicnuclear interactions, Intermediate filaments & Nuclear organization, Nuclear periphery & chromatin organization I. The School included a daily poster session in which the speakers and the students could interact. Organizers aimed at attracting students from target countries. This timely topic was boosted forward by the integration of emerging technologies and seminal findings. Organizer´s approach was to organize this international school with the emphasis of bringing together leading scientists from multiple disciplines, which were within the frame of our COST program.
Organizers emphasized a highly novel and emerging concept, which was the inside-out and outside-in crosstalk between cytoskeletal and nucleoskeletal signaling. They believed that the field matured to the point where the crosstalk between different areas of science was essential for generating groundbreaking discoveries. More importantly, it was an important subject for the students to learn from world leaders. As organizers, their task were to facilitate and stimulate a cross-disciplinary discussion focused on structure and function of the cell nucleus. This school was right in the center of our COST program and included the subjects of all 4 workgroups, as they appeared in the proposal. A few of the confirmed speakers were: Roger Kornberg – Nobel Laurent on transcription, world leaders in mechano-biology (David Weitz, Dennis Discher, Jan Lammerding), as well as Rob Singer, Susan Gasser and many more. Students and other participants presented posters and interacted with the invited speakers.
The aim of this training school was to provide both an overview and cutting edge research data on the role of cellular structural networks in CNS disease pathogenesis, with a special focus on the glia-neuron interactions in health and disease.
The training school aimed at providing multidisciplinary understanding of the function of cellular structural networks in CNS disease context. In the past 10 years, deregulation of structural cellular networks and their impact on human diseases, had been intensely studied, and glia‐neuron interactions had been found to play a key role in the pathogenesis of many neurological diseases. This training school aimed to present and integrate novel techniques and recent discoveries as well as to define interdisciplinary approaches to study cellular networks in CNS diseases for better understanding of diseases pathogenesis and the opportunities to enhance regenerative processes in situations such as stroke, neurotrauma, Alzheimer's disease, ALS, or Alexander disease. Organizers brought together some of the most prominent scientists and teachers from diverse but highly complementary fields, including astrocyte (patho)physiology, biology of the nanofilament system, cell signaling, cell biophysics and rheology, neuroimmunology, neurodegeneration, regeneration/neuroplasticity, or state‐of‐the art in vitro and in vivo imaging.
The aim of this training school was to provide both an overview and cutting edge research data on the role of cellular structural networks in CNS disease pathogenesis, with a special focus on the glia-neuron interactions in health and disease.
The training school aimed at providing multidisciplinary understanding of the function of cellular structural networks in CNS disease context. In the past 10 years, deregulation of structural cellular networks and their impact on human diseases, had been intensely studied, and glia‐neuron interactions had been found to play a key role in the pathogenesis of many neurological diseases. This training school aimed to present and integrate novel techniques and recent discoveries as well as to define interdisciplinary approaches to study cellular networks in CNS diseases for better understanding of diseases pathogenesis and the opportunities to enhance regenerative processes in situations such as stroke, neurotrauma, Alzheimer's disease, ALS, or Alexander disease. Organizers brought together some of the most prominent scientists and teachers from diverse but highly complementary fields, including astrocyte (patho)physiology, biology of the nanofilament system, cell signaling, cell biophysics and rheology, neuroimmunology, neurodegeneration, regeneration/neuroplasticity, or state‐of‐the art in vitro and in vivo imaging.
The aim of the workshop was to discuss the molecular and structural principles of intermediate filaments and their roles in health and diseases. With this workshop organizers want to bring scientists together from different areas of intermediate filament research in order to stimulate communication and efficient exchange of experimental results, methodology, concepts and hypotheses.
One of the goals of this workshop was to provide opportunities for young participants who have various interests in intermediate filaments to share their research findings and obtain feedback through presentations, discussions and interactions with their peers and experts in the intermediate filament field.
The topics of this meeting focused on a wide range of studies on the structure and function of intermediate filaments using biophysical, cellular and molecular biological techniques.
Organizers designed a program that it was composed of different topic sessions, each session structured with a first introductive/overview talk made by a renowned expert of the topic who made a review of the topic/field rather presenting only his/her latest data of his/her own lab, then organizers had talks from speakers selected from abstract, with a priority to ECI for these oral communications. Eight different sessions were set up on the following topics: Cytoskeletal crosstalk, Intermediate filaments in neuronal development, Disease modeling & Translational development, Regulation of structure and assembly of Intermediate filament, Mechanobiology of Intermediate filaments, Metabolic regulation & Mitochondria, Proteostatis, Cancer, Migration & Epigenetic. All of them match the EuroCellNet objectives. Assembly of IF was organized as a COST session:
STSM facilitates Researchers from COST Countries participating in COST Action 15214 to go to an institution, organisation or research centre in another participating COST Country to foster collaboration and to perform empirical research. Participation of “Early Career Investigators” (ECI) in STSM is particularly encouraged. An applicant can be considered as being an ECI when the time that has elapsed between the award date of the applicants PhD and the date of the applicants first involvement in the COST Action 15214 does not exceed 8 years. PhD students are also eligible to partake in STSMs. STSMs can have a duration of between 5 days and 90 days.
During the Grant Period 1 four Short Term Scientific Missions were realized:
The aim of the workshop was to allow all interested parties to present their data and seek for prospective collaboration and networking. An extra space was allocated for early career researchers.
75 participants
28 countries
39 oral presentations (8 ECIs)
16 posters
Abstract Book (pdf)
Profiles of COST Action (CA15214) Participants (pdf)
19-23 June 2023, Prague Czech Republic
28 – 31 August 2022 | Prague | Czech Republic
Registration and Abstract submission OPEN
Symposium | March 8th–10th, 2022 | Singapore (On site/online)