University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) – PROMINENT

Diabetes is rapidly evolving into the leading disease worldwide. On the long term, even when treated correctly, diabetes leads to severe complications such as cardiovascular diseases and renal failure. These complications are caused by the large variation in individual response to the treatment. Only a personalised approach will offer a solution for diabetes disease management. And developing a personalized approach is only possible when all stakeholders, such as the pharmaceutical industry, payers, caregivers and researchers are involved. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND PROMINENT programme therefore aims to develop a personalised approach by establishing an international research and training programme that brings together all the disciplines and sectors involved in diabetes.

Multidisicplinary, intersectoral training programme with an international approach

Within PROMINENT, the University Medical Centre of Groningen (UMCG) and the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen (RUG) launch a local training programme. PROMINENT joins forces of research groups from multiple disciplines to supervise and train sixteen international PhD candidates. PROMINENT closely collaborates with multiple international academic, private and non-governmental organisations. This will establish a strong international long-term network that is committed to the development of a personalised approach for diabetes disease management. Furthermore, PROMINENT will be a showcase for other diseases that need a multidisciplinary, intersectoral and international approach.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND

PROMINENT has received funding from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND instrument as part of the European Horizon 2020 programme. Through this instrument, the European Commission aims to develop the research skills of young researchers and offer them better career perspectives. Hezelburcht has written the application together with the researchers and Research Office at UMCG. This application was ranked number 1 in the MSC COFUND round of 2016.

This programme is a unique chance to develop new, personalized treatment solutions for diabetes patients. It offers us the opportunity to train ambitious people to become the next generation of researchers in this field that are able to approach this problem in a multidisciplinary way. This will increase the chance of successfully develop these new therapies tremendously. The collaboration with and support from Hezelburcht has led to a very high quality proposal. Expertise from Hezelburcht and UMCG was combined optimally, which gave us the chance to set up this network and write the proposal in a relatively short period of time. - Prof. Dick de Zeeuw