EMERG - More New Members - and EU Research Application
EMERG has recently welcomed new members to the group.
Dr Sigurveig T Sigurdardottir MD, PhD is Head of the Department of Immunology at Landspitali University Hospital in Iceland She is a specialist in pediatrics, allergy and clinical immunology.
Dr Kristjan Erlendsson is a clinical immunologist is working with Dr Sigurdardottir on the foundation of an interest group for auto inflammatory diseases. He also works at the Department of Immunology at Landspitali University Hospital in Reykjavik and is seeing a lot of patients with ASIA syndrome, mould intolerance and people with symptoms resembling ME.
Both Dr Sigurdardottir and Dr Erlendsson joined EMERG and attended the EMERG planning meeting and #BRMEC12 Biomedical Research Colloquium in Cambridge, UK in May organised by UK Charity Invest in ME Research.
More information
Also, Associate Professor Eva Untersmayr-Elsenhuber from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria has also joined EMERG - with her colleague from the same institute, Dr Tomas Vogl, having joined and attended the EMERG planning meeting and #BRMEC12 Colloquium in May.
Dr Untersmayr-Elsenhuber is a medical doctor
specialising in clinical immunology.
Her research lab is focusing on gastrointestinal immunology in the context of immune mediated diseases such
as allergies but also post infectious diseases, including ME.
She has not yet published much on ME as she initiated this area of
research within her research team based on her clinical work with ME
patients in 2019.
However,
she has started basic research projects in ME/CFS some years ago (before the SARS CoV 2 pandemic).
Interestingly, they are about to establish a ME biobank at the Medical University of Vienna,
which will hopefully provide greater possibilities
for collaborations within EMERG.
Also there are several research projects ongoing
(also in the field of Long-COVID) there is hope of some interesting data coming through
which will be published soon.
More information:
https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/hp/ipa/forschung/forschungsgruppen/untersmayr-elsenhuber-eva-gastrointestinal-immunology/
Also from Eva's lab Johanna Rohrhofer has joined Young EMERG.
EMERG Research Application
As previously reported
the
EMERG 2023 Planning Meeting
was held in the run up to the 12th Invest in ME Research Biomedical Research into ME
Colloquium at the Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge, UK,
in May.
The group discussed the EMERG application to the EU Horizon funding stream for under-researched diseases.
This EU call for applications had been discussed by the Dr. Catherine Berens - European Commission Research and Innovation - EU Activities in Brain Research
in the
European ME Alliance webinars -
1st Roundtable of European
Stakeholders and Policymakers
and
ME/CFS in EUROPE - EMEA ROUNDTABLE II.
Professor Elisa Oltra had been nominated as the lead for the EMERG bid and working groups were discussed.
As reported in the Invest in ME Research
Post-Conference Week (
click here)
the group had been made aware of another potential application being formed elsewhere.
This would have been quite a short-sighted approach for applying for the
very scarce European funding for research into ME, especially when this call
for under-researched diseases has many other diseases being considered and
would have been against the interests of people with ME.
Thanks to IiMER further discussions and meetings were held to bring these applications together
and the researchers were convinced that a single application would be the best and obvious way forward.
The only matter remained to convince the other group that this was the only sensible approach.
Professor Oltra made this approach possible by agreeing to step down as lead on this occasion
in favour of another EMERG member who had been in discussions with other researchers outside of EMERG to form
an application.
After ongoing discussions following the EMERG planning meeting
a number working group packages are being created, with almost all of these being led by EMERG researchers.
So a joined-up approach from EMERG and Professor Oltra and Professor Simon Carding have been very active in this.
An application will be made for the stage 1 process for this EU Horizon funding - being completed this autumn.
Successful applicatants will then go forward to a stage 2 round next year
and those chosen, successful applications (likely to be four in all) will be announced by the EU in 2024.
EMERG 2024 Planning Meeting
The European ME Research Group will meet in person at the recently announced International ME Conference Week 2024 arranged by UK charity Invest in ME Research at the Wellcome Genome Campus near Cambridge, UK, The meeting is scheduled for June 2024 and precedes the BRMEC13 13th Biomedical Research into ME Colloquium - hopefully with some good news.
Last Update August 2023