During previous TRAIN-HEART network meeting in Milan (28-30 September 2022), the winners of the business case and elevator pitch competition were announced: EASY-COR. The work package 1 team prepared the best business case and presentation pitch and won a 250€ travel/conference award for each team member. An independent refereee panel reviewed all cases and pitches and the end-result was very tight.

In Berlin this summer several TRAIN-HEART fellows presented their work at the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) World Congress 2022. The spirit of ISHR is characterized by the scientific and social interactions of their members, and we can not agree more with this.

For years, Professor Dr. Dr. Thomas Thum, head of the Institute for Molecular and Translational Therapy Strategies at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) and institute director of Fraunhofer ITEM, has been researching a remedy for the hitherto incurable cardiac fibrosis. He has already received the highest science funding from the European Union for this, an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant.

Review title: Non-Coding RNAs in the Therapeutic Landscape of Pathological Cardiac Hypertrophy.

Published in Cells 2022, 11(11), 1805; https://doi.org/10.3390/cells11111805

The Eschenhagen group at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf recently published an article about the progress in the field of heart regeneration.

The research group at Lyon Unversity recently published a review to report on the many existing complex systems composed of chitosan hydrogels embedding different types of colloids used as drug delivery devices to delay the release of drugs. The various biomedical applications of such final systems are also detailed in this review.

Lead scientist Dr. Marc Hirt of University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and supervisor of Kinga Wrona (TRAIN-HEART fellow) presented his work at the Frontiers in Cardiovascular Biomedicine congress 2022

The group of Prof. Condorelli (Humanitas Hospital Milan, Italy) recently published a review on the impact of environmental factors, such as diet, smoking, and lifestyle, as pathogenic factors in heart failure development. Epigenetic changes can arise as a consequence of these factors.

From 16-18 February the first hybrid TRAIN-HEART network meeting was organised by our partner: University of Porto.

The research team led by Stefan Engelhardt, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Principal Investigator in the TRAIN-HEART network, has developed a new RNA drug that can prevent inflammatory lung damage. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is supporting further development of the drug as part of the TUM spin-off "rnatics" with around 7 million euros.

Great work conducted by the groups at Humanitas Mirasole (Milan, Italy) and led by Dr. Daniele Catalucci.

Two TRAIN-HEART groups teamed up (Hannover Medical School & Technical University Munich) to elucdiate the promoting role of long non-coding RNA NRON in the development of cardiac hypertrophy in the murine heart.

Hussein Genedy, TRAIN-HEART fellow at Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, presented his work at the 7th International Congress of the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence (EPNOE Association)

In the beginning of July, the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, beneficiary in the TRAIN-HEART network, organized a full-day webinar on Biocompatible Drug Delivery Systems in which all TRAIN-HEART fellows attended.

The fifth TRAIN-HEART Network Meeting, gathering all partners and research fellows, took place from the 23rd and 24th of June 2021.

Deepak Balamurali, TRAIN-HEART fellow appointed at Maastricht University was awarded a congress grant covering the costs of registration for the EHRA Congress 2021(virtual) and EHRA Congress 2022 (tentatively in-person). He drafted a testimonial on this unique experience.

An exciting paper, resuling from a huge amount of excellent work by the group of Prof. Mauro Giacca at King's College London has been published in Nature last month!

Join the ISHR webinar on the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology's Special Issue on Cardiac Epigenetics: Driving signals to the cardiac epigenome in development and disease. Guest Editors Emma Louise Robinson, Manuel Rosa-Garrido, Chukwuemeka George Anene-Nzelu will host the discussion with two authors from the special issue: Ralf Gilsbach and Justus Stenzig.

Myocardial regeneration is restricted to early postnatal life, when mammalian cardiomyocytes still retain the ability to proliferate. The molecular cues that induce cell cycle arrest of neonatal cardiomyocytes towards terminally differentiated adult heart muscle cells remain obscure. In this 2021 paper it is reported that the miR-106b∼25 cluster is higher expressed in the early postnatal myocardium and decreases in expression towards adulthood, especially under conditions of overload, and orchestrates the transition of cardiomyocyte hyperplasia towards cell cycle arrest and hypertrophy by virtue of its targetome.

All abstracts of previous Heart Failure Association Winter Research Meeting (January 2021) are now published in the European Journal of Heart Failure: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejhf.2100

The European Society of Cardiology and Harteraad, both partners in the TRAIN-HEART network, focus on the close involvement of patients in cardiovascular research.

Presenter: Professor Mauro Giacca

Title: High throughput screening

In this paper, the group of Prof. Mayr at King’s College London assessed RNAemia, antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 and proteomic profiles in serial blood samples from COVID-19 patients admitted to two Intensive Care Units.

Review paper: Non-Coding RNA Databases in Cardiovascular Research.

Authors: Deepak Balamurali and  Monika Stoll (Maastricht University).

This 2021 conference is set to explore the latest developments in RNA delivery agents and RNA-based therapeutics with the latest case studies on advanced mRNA technologies, oligonucleotide delivery, therapeutic applications and future trends and innovations.

Saturday, 15 May - Tuesday, 18 May 2021

Heart Failure is the world's leading congress for experts in cardiology to discuss strategies for a universal approach towards the prevention and treatment of heart failure.

Since 2000, on the last Sunday in September we celebrate World Heart Day in order to raise global awareness of the importance of cardiovascular diseases and promote their control. The event arose as an initiative of the World Heart Federation and enjoys the patronage of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Pandemic 101: lessons from COVID-19 to young researchers

Nice workshop of Prof. Manuel Mayr, invited by the Alan Turing Institute on "Making the most of 'omics data"

The second edition of the X-omics festival “the future is now!” will take place online, on Monday September 28th 2020 from 09.30 – 14.00 CEST.

Bringing stakeholders together to shape future research and innovation policy.

ESC Congress – the world’s largest cardiovascular event – moves 100% online for the first time in its 70-year history, to create ESC Congress 2020 – Challenging Times, Infinite Possibilities. The ESC Congress Programme Committee has assembled the very latest cardiovascular research across over 500 sessions with 750 experts from 49 countries.

The TRAIN-HEART MSCA ITN is now also on Twitter! You can get all your updates about the ongoing research in this consortium, meet the researchers and more! Make sure you follow @TRAINHEART4 on Twitter!

The TRAIN-HEART ESR journal club is launched this week and will meet regularly online to critically evaluate recent articles in the academic literature, such as the scientific literature, medical literature, or philosophy literature.

On Monday 16 March 2020, the Heart Failure Association (HFA) organized a dedicated webinar: "Next generation RNA therapeutics. Background and clinical development in cardiovascular disease".

As part of their outreach skills training, the scientist have created three educative video tutorials.

From 20 to 24 January 2020 the first TRAIN-HEART network meeting and training event was organized at the Technical University Munchen (Germany).

Re-advertisement of 4 positions. Are you interested? Check Project 2, Project 5, Project 14 and Project 15 on Euraxess or the TRAIN-HEART website.