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About IM2PACT

A new consortium of 27 international partners from academia, industry, and small and medium enterprises, aims to tackle the unmet challenge of discovery and characterisation of blood-brain barrier targets and transport mechanisms for brain delivery of therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases.

Discovering and developing

innovative and effective brain transport mechanisms

New BBB models

establishing and characterising BBB models with good predictability in health and disease

Analyze

identifying translational read-outs closer to the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration and mimicking altered BBB under disease conditions

Overview of the work plan

Principal project objectives

  • Discovery and development of innovative and efficacious brain transport mechanisms
  • Establishment and characterisation of BBB models with good predictability in health and disease
  • Identification of translational readouts closer to the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration and mimicking altered BBB under disease conditions
  • In-depth understanding of the biology of the BBB and characterization of various pathophysiological mechanisms across the BBB
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Identification of genes or pathways candidates associated with neurodegenerative diseases and expressed in brain endothelial cells

Work package 1

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Develop best state-of-the-art (e.g. hiPSC- or progenitor-derived) BBB models

Work package 3

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Follow-up on identification and characterisation of new potential targets from WP2

Work package 5

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Phenotypic validation of these genes or pathways in endothelial cells

Work package 2

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Characterisation of neurotropic virus-based BBB and brain penetration mechanisms

Work package 4

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Management, communication, dissemination


Work package 6

Striving for success

Delivering
the right solutions

“Our existing models are not effective enough at telling us which drugs in particular biotherapeutics will break through the blood-brain barrier. IM2PACT will progress the state of the art and help devise optimal ways of getting therapies into the brain.”
Dominique Lesuisse
Head of the Central Nervous System Barrier Group at Sanofi and IM2PACT project leader
“With this funding, we will be able to develop more sophisticated models that replicate the human blood-brain barrier far more accurately, allowing us to investigate how the barrier acts at a molecular level during disease.”
Zameel Cader
Principal investigator of NDCN at the University of Oxford and IM2PACT project coordinator
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“This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 807015. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.“

The project is being run by

Consortium partners

The organizations included
in the research programme.