European Research Council awards a grant to Biochemist Lydia Sorokin
Biochemist Professor Lydia Sorokin from the University of Münster has been awarded an ‘ERC Proof of Concept Grant’ worth 150,000 euros from the European Research Council (ERC) for her ‘BraIN’ project. Her work addresses one of the greatest challenges facing modern medicine: the transport of active substances across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Through the ‘ERC Proof of Concept Grant’, the EU supports researchers who have already received ERC funding and now wish to explore the economic or societal potential of their research findings. These include, for example, new treatment methods, technologies and services. The project will run for 18 months.
Lydia Sorokin heads the Institute of Physiological Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine and is spokesperson for the ‘Cells in Motion Interfaculty Centre’ at the University of Münster. Her newly funded project focuses on the limited validity of previous laboratory models, which do not realistically reflect the complexity of the blood-brain barrier. This limitation is a major factor contributing to high failure rates in the development of new therapies for neurological diseases. More than 3.4 billion people worldwide are affected by these disorders.
Lydia Sorokin has developed a new 3D model that precisely replicates the natural human blood-brain barrier. By combining the various cell types that make up the blood-brain barrier (endothelial cells derived from stem cells, pericytes and an astroglial barrier) within a hydrogel matrix, the model reproduces crucial structural and functional properties that are lacking in previous models. “This enables us to predict reliably whether active substances actually reach the brain,” emphasises Lydia Sorokin. The funding that has now been awarded will be used to optimise and validate the model. The aim is to develop a robust and patentable system for applications in pharmaceutical and biotechnological research. The work builds on Lydia Sorokin’s ‘ERC Advanced Grant’ project ‘B3M – Breaking into the Brain: Basement membranes and the perivascular niche”, which was awarded in 2022, and translates fundamental insights into a practical and scalable platform for drug development.
In the long term, BraIN has the potential to reduce late-stage failures in drug development, accelerate innovation in therapies for neurological diseases, and create new opportunities for collaborations, licensing and spin-offs. The full project title is: “A Conceptually New 3-Dimensional Blood-Brain Barrier Model – Designed to Overcome the Limited Predictive Power of Current In Vitro Systems”.
In the current call for proposals, 182 researchers have been awarded a “Proof of Concept Grant”, including 31 from Germany. The grants form part of the European research and innovation programme “Horizon Europe”.