Obesity and Alzheimer’s under the watchful eye of a new 10M€ European research project

"This grant is a new qualitative leap in our laboratory, it changes everything: the visibility of the group and the center... and of course, it also increases our ability to value our work before our foreign colleagues". Just a few hours later, CiMUS researcher Rubén Nogueiras was glad to share his expectations after the resolution made public on Tuesday by the European Research Council (ERC), which has recognized his research group among the 27 new grants awarded this year with the new European transnational projects, within the framework of ERC's Synergy Grants program.

Only 7 Spanish researchers take part of this list gathering the best proposals of this edition (2018) –the first call aimed to be extended over time, after two preliminary editions in 2012 and 2013-. Among them, the group led by Prof. Nogueiras, which will add during the next 6 years the advanced skills of his CiMUS team (University of Santiago) to the expertise of his partners, the two worldwide expert groups led by Prof. Vincent Prévot (Lille, France) and Markus Schwaninger (Lübeck, Germany).

With the idea that new bonds between these groups will produce a greater effect than the sum of the teams separately (fundamental premise of the Synergy Grants), a new research project has just been born: WATCH: Well-Aging and the Tanycytic Control of Health, funded with a total budget of 10M€.

Tanycytes: luxury supporting actors in a rarely explored scenario

Tanycytes are cells of our central nervous system, about which barely any information exists. It is known that they are responsible for supplying our neurons with the nutrients and metabolites they need, but with the exception of some studies published around the 60s and 70s last century, very few groups have worked with them, mainly because they are a very small cell population (thousands of tanycytes vs millions of neurons). This singularity, together with an evident lack of knowledge, make these cells look 'less attractive' to the scientific community.

The approach outlined by the ambitious WATCH project (whose partners include the two worldwide reference groups in the field) is to study these cells beyond the perspective of the central nervous system, taking into account the role that tanycytes could play in their interaction with the peripheral organs. Scientists propose that tanycytes, as mediators participating in the exchange of substances, could be involved in the relationship between obesity and neurodegenerative illnesses (mainly Alzheimer's), as some epidemiological studies have already confirmed.

What if they were the key?

Preliminary data suggest that, introducing certain modifications inside the tanycytes, it is possible to alter some mechanisms that regulate body weight. On the basis of this information –which would assign these cells a direct role in weight regulation-, the project focuses on different purposes: on one hand, the identification and characterization of tanycyte populations (not all are alike, and they may not play the same role either); on the other hand, to explore the ability to intervene on the internal mechanisms of these cells to modify body weight; and finally, to find out whether or not it is feasible to improve or mitigate Alzheimer's signs in elder animal models through the manipulation of tanycytes.

The experimentation phase will cover one of the two main areas of the project; the other one, developed mainly in France and closer to a clinical approach, will be aimed to analyze a sample of patients with certain degenerative disorders, in order to observe the activity that these cells perform while they interact with neuronal activity. This study with patients will represent one of the greatest technical challenges in the upcoming years, as the visualization of brain's specific deep areas constitutes a great magnitude goal, which scientists expect to reach along the project.

New questions, new answers

The WATCH project, which is initially scheduled to start in January 2019, will open a new and unexplored line of research up to date, since it faces the study of tanycytes as cells much more valuable than what it has been considered so far. An innovative idea, combining a huge knowledge from the world's leading experts in the field with the contribution of Molecular Metabolism research group, which has vastly demonstrated its ability to analyze the relationship between the central nervous system and the rest of our body (particularly those mechanisms involved in obesity, its main field of study). And although this is basically a fundamental research project, Prof. Rubén Nogueiras is clear: "thinking from a translational point of view, we believe that reaching these cells will be easier than crossing all the barriers that exist in our body," he says. "We will not be able to develop a drug -because in six years it is impossible-, but we expect to find new therapeutic targets on which a potential drug could act".

More information:
erc.europa.eu/news/erc-2018-synergy-grants-results
erc.europa.eu/funding/synergy-grants
Media contact
Andrés Ruiz - Elena Mora
comunicacion.campusvida@usc.es
+34 8818 16411

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