Scientists from Warsaw and Kraków will work on two international research projects funded by the NCN in cooperation with the SNSF, with a total budget of more than PLN 4.2 million. We are pleased to present the second ranking list of projects selected in this year’s Weave-UNISONO call.
Both scientists specialise in Life Sciences. Dr Marcin Tabaka from the International Eye Research Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences will work on a project focused on the spatial determinants of immunotherapy resistance in cancer. Thanks to important advancements in cancer research, immune-checkpoint therapy (ICI) has emerged as an important treatment modality for cancers that resist other available therapies. Recent research, however, shows that only 13% of patients respond to immunotherapy and, what’s more, its mechanisms are not entirely understood. This problem will be tackled by Dr Tabaka and his team in partnership with a team from the University of Basel, led by Professor Alfred Zippelius. They will attempt to determine precisely how ICI works and why, in a majority of patients, it fails. To this end, they will conduct an interdisciplinary study, including a series of experiments to analyse the cellular and transcriptional changes associated with tumours infiltrating immune cells; in addition, they will develop computational tools to better understand the organisation of the tumour microenvironment. The Polish team in the four-year project will receive nearly PLN 1.85 million in funding.
The other winner in this year’s Weave-UNISONO call is Dr Tomasz Kościółek from the Małopolska Biotechnology Centre of the Jagiellonian University, who will study the human gut microbiome. Scientists all over the world have long been researching the diversity of these gut-inhabiting organisms across space and time, trying to understand how variations in their populations relate to human health and behaviour. This research has uncovered more than 600 million protein-coding genes from nearly 5,000 prokaryotic species, but the function of around half of these genes remains unknown. Dr Kościółek, in partnership with researchers from the University of Basel, headed by Prof. Torsten Schwede, will study these genes and attempt to identify their role and function in the human body, using deep learning and large-scale evolutionary modelling. The researchers will create an atlas of human gut protein structures and functions, and a protein universe map to help scientists navigate this vast space. The Polish team will receive nearly PLN 2.4 million for their four-year project.
The projects were selected following an evaluation by the Swiss National Science Foundation in its capacity as the lead agency under the Weave program. The National Science Centre accepted the results and awarded grants to the Polish teams.
Weave-UNISONO
The Weave-UNISONO call is the result of multilateral cooperation between research-funding agencies that make up the Science Europe association. It aims to simplify submission and selection procedures for research proposals that bring together researchers from two or three different European countries in any academic discipline.
The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for merit-based evaluation and the others simply accept the result.
Under Weave, partner research teams apply in parallel to the lead agency and their relevant domestic institutions. Their joint proposal must include coherent research plans and clearly spell out the added value of international cooperation.
The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to carefully read the call text and submit their funding proposals.