Tilbake til søkeresultatene

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

Japan And Norway United in Brain, Education and Therapeutics

Alternativ tittel: Japan og Norge forent i Hjernen, Utdanning og Terapi

Tildelt: kr 4,5 mill.

Målet med prosjektet var å utdanne unge nevrovitere i Norge og Japan mens de aktivt utførte forskningsprosjekter i en av de deltakende instituttene. Vårt banebrytende, internasjonale forskningssamarbeid mellom de tre internasjonalt høyt rangerte forskningsgruppene sikret forsknings- og praksissteder som er unike i verden. Vi hadde til hensikt å samle og utveksle studenter som jobbet med nye genetiske verktøy for å manipulere funksjonen i identifiserte nevroner gjennom å endre deres genetiske kode. Vi lyktes i å bringe sammen studenter fra Norge og Japan gjennom to samlinger i Norge og tre samlinger i Japan. Selv om vi fant PhD-kandidater som kunne delta i det planlagte utvekslingsprogrammet har den langvarige COVID-pandemien forhindret implementering med unntak av ett kort opphold av en student fra Tohoku Universitet ved Kavli-Instituttet våren 2022. Vi måtte også stå over det planlagte møtet mellom unge forskere, men andre mål som var lagt inn i søknaden har blitt oppnådd, inkludert fem møter, to digitale undervisningsmoduler som er tilgjengelige på You Tube, og fem publiserte møterapporter. Alle våre kurs, seminarer og møter har mottatt veldig positive vurderinger, ikke bare fra studentene som kom fra våre egne institusjoner, men også fra et betydelig antall deltakende studenter fra andre institusjoner i tillegg til våre inviterte forelesere. I 2022 avsluttet vi prosjektet som planlagt med et svært vellykket internasjonalt symposium om nye verktøy for studier av nevrale kretser som fant sted i Kyoto i september.

We organized four courses as planned and we expect that these will contribute to the broader education of our students. Material of one of these courses has resulted in two educational products that will be further developed and improved in the coming year(s) and are now publicly available. We have designed new vectors to impact the brain based on human data. Further testing is needed to establish the applicability and specificity. We carried out enhancer enhancer analyses of 4 primate brain regions in 2018, and these will be used to design vectors specific to parts of the medial prefrontal cortex in relation to the ongoing research on mechanisms of depression by one of the partners. This may lead to new approaches to selectively and with long duration change activity levels in specific brain areas involved in depression. We succeeded to design vectors crossing the BBB in primates and succeeded in brain-wide gene transduction into neurons following intravenous administration of the vector of macaque and marmoset neonates. We further succeeded in cerebellar Purkinje cell-selective gene transduction. This may provide a stepping stone towards systemic injections of vectors to reset gene activity in specific neuronal populations, i.e. neurons that are causally implicated in brain diseases. • 6 Norwegian students to international symposium and visit primate labs Kyoto and Inuyama 20 – 25 September 2022 • 8 Japanese students to Norwegian PhD conference 27 -29 September Stiklestad and visit to Kavli Institute of 5 students on 3 October • One month stay of 1Tohoku student, Hinako Kirikae, to Trondheim, February 2022.

Educating young neuroscientists at MSc and PhD level happens hands on, actively carrying out research projects. Successful training depends on training by excellent scientists, who head excellent research groups that are embedded in a large multi-disciplinary environment. Here we propose to initiate a ground-breaking, cutting-edge, international research collaboration, with a very high potential to result in treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. Together, the three partners secure a research and training space, which is unique in the world. The two Japanese partners have a longstanding collaborative tradition and this holds also true for NTNU and Tohoku University. The participating Japanese and Norwegian students will actively contribute to an international research collaboration. They will be exposed to different research cultures since they will study for some time in a country different from where they are being educated and will obtain their degree. Their projects will all be part of a frontiers research endeavor, based on the very recent discovery of new tools to manipulate the phenotype of identified neurons through changing their genotype, providing a very high potential to result in treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. We will initiate a student and researcher exchange program between the three partners, including exchange visits and hands-on courses at all locations. These courses will be recorded to prepare new online educational materials, to be used in training generations of students to come. An added aspect will include the exposure to neuromedicine, i.e. the application of obtained fundamental knowledge towards the development and assessment of new therapeutics.

Budsjettformål:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research