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Horizon Europe EIC Pathfinder Open 2021: Spanish SME seeks partner for kidney transplant immune monitoring system

Country of Origin: Spain
Reference Number: RDES20210507001
Publication Date: 7 May 2021

Summary

Basque SME (north of Spain) wishes to complete a consortium with a clinician who has access to kidney transplant biopsies for the EIC Pathfinder open call 2021. The objective is to develop a clinical analytic system which enables new and better strategies for immune monitoring in kidney transplant recipients.

Description

The control of immune system after a transplant is crucial to ensure the survival not only of the graft but also of the transplant patient.



The advances in immunosuppression, histocompatibility and surgical techniques have been responsible for the success achieved in the kidney transplant at early-term post-transplantation. However, the risk of graft loss remains very high in the medium and long-term (50% in the tenth-year post-transplantation). The chronic humoral rejection is commonly associated to this graft loss, being donor-specific anti-HLA (DSA) antibodies a risk factor generally accepted. 

Histocompatibility laboratories routinely used assays based on these biomarkers to monitor the immune system in transplant patient. In spite of the great sensitivity of DSA (donor specific antibodies) detection, 60% of kidney graft losses present antibody-mediated tissue injury, indicating the importance of non-DSA antibodies. These non-DSA reactive antibodies recognize specific epitopes of the graft cell membranes and proteins promoting the immune response against the graft. However, histocompatibility laboratories still lack a specific tool that enables the non-DSA reactive antibodies monitoring, mainly due to the inherent difficulties and limitations to work with the samples required. 



In order to address this need, the company behind the profile proposes the development of a new system that allows the identification of DSA and non-DSA reactive antibodies against the graft in the serum of transplant patients. The company launching this partner search is made upof experts in screening, drug discovery and biomolecule characterization for which they employ tools in their propietory microarray technologies. The company is the only member of the consortium so far.



The role of the partners sought sticks mainly to sample collection-processing, immune monitoring benchmarking and experimental results validation.



Call deadline: 19th May

EOI deadline: 12th May

Project duration: 3 years

Funding programme: Horizon Europe Pathfinder Open Calendario 2021

Advantages and Innovations

•	Easier and simpler immune monitoring in transplant patients.

Early detection of rejection episodes

•	Adjustment of medical doses leading to less toxicity and derived pathologies as neoplasia

•	Higher cost-effectiveness ratios of transplant surgery as well as patients’ life expectancy and quality

Expertise sought

The partner should have expertise in kidney tranplant donor/recipient immune system compatibility and immune monitoring approaches after transplantation.

Experience in immune monitoring of patients is highly desired, as the tasks assigned in the project will range from sample/biospsies acquisition and processing to validantion and benchmarking of immune monitoring results obtained in the project vs conventional/existing techniques.

Stage Of Development

Concept stage

Stage Of Development Comment

The project is at concept stage, with prototypes at TRL (technology readiness level) 6-7.  The technology in which is supported is fully tested and reliable. Time to market will be within 24 mo. after project completion.

The proposal and project organization is also at its final stage regarding milestones, work packages and tasks definition.

Requested partner

The partner sought could be an SME, a university or a hospital with access and authorization to manipulate (for research activities) human kidney transplant biopsies.

Experience in immune monitoring of patients is highly desired, as the tasks assigned in the project will range from sample/biopsies acquisition and processing, to validation and benchmarking of immune monitoring results obtained in the project vs conventional/existing techniques.



Tasks: sample acquisition and processing, immune monitoring benchmarking and experimental results validation