Prof. Janusz Bujnicki is a partner and WP1 Leader in the H2020 MSCA ITN project entitled “ROle of ePitranscriptomics in diseasES”, acronym ROPES. The aim of the project is to unravel the role of epitranscriptomics in diseases and to exploit it for novel therapies. ROPES, awarded with 3M € from the European Commission, started on December 1st, 2020 and will last 48 months. 

Prof. Bujnicki will recruit an Early Stage Researcher to perform innovative research project in extending the tools of epitranscriptomics to fight diseases in cooperation with leading universities in Europe and the United States of America. The young researcher will be exposed to research and innovation activities through the supervision of a European top-class network of researchers, training, retreat programmes and research secondments in the group of Prof. Quattrone (UNITN) and Prof. Frye (DKFZ).

Epitranscriptomics is an emergent field of research, studying more than 100 types of chemical RNA modifications. These chemical marks impact many aspects of cellular physiology and pathology by mechanisms which are still barely understood. Its far-reaching implications promise to yield paradigm-shift approaches for the development of novel therapies for severe diseases.

The project involves ten European laboratories and one biotech company from nine different countries, including: the University of Trento, the Medical University of Wien (Austria), the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (Poland), the Umea University (Sweden), the German Cancer Research Center DKFZ (Germany), il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy), the Centre for Genomic Regulation (Spain), CEITEC- University of Masaryk (Czech Republic), Immagina Biotechnology Srl (Italy), Free University of Bruxelles (Belgium).  The kick-off meeting on the project was held on December 17.

More about project: ROles of ePitranscriptomic in diseasES