Humanitas University

Humanitas University (HUNIMED) is an international higher education institution, established in 2014 and recognized by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR). HUNIMED research interests focused on basic and translational research in life sciences. Research activities at HUNIMED supported by cutting-edge technological units. Since 2017, HUNIMED has inaugurated a new campus nearby the IRCCS Humanitas. Our students, researchers and physicians have access to an area of up to 36,000 smq. The Campus’ area consists of four buildings dedicated to teaching, research and student services and residence. Translational studies are carried out in tight collaboration with the Humanitas Research Hospital (recognized by Joint Commission International), a 750 bed hospital devoted to clinical research mainly in the context of immune-related, neurological, cardiovascular and neoplastic diseases. Research activities are carried out by 350 researchers and physicians, divided into more than 24 research groups including several prestigious, top-level groups covering many research areas: Immunology , Cardiovascular Research, Neuroscience, Oncology.

Role within ImmUniverse

HUNIMED represents the scientific coordinator (SCOO) that will coordinate the activities of the whole ImmUniverse consortium, including the coordination of administrative, legal, financial and ethical matters (WP1). The SCOO will take the role as the main contact point for all communications between the IMI JU and the consortium, monitor that the project is implemented according to plan, and submit all deliverables and reports to the IMI JU as laid out in the Grant Agreement (GA). Furthermore, HUNIMED will receive all IMI JU payments and distribute them to the consortium promptly. Additionally, the SCOO will be in charge of the scientific coordination, providing strategic alignment of project activities and interfacing with the EFPIA Project Leader (PL) regarding the management and implementation of the ImmUniverse project plan. Scientifically, HUNIMED will contribute to set the standard operative procedures for sample handling, quality control and extraction. It will analyse lipidomics profiling in longitudinal cohort of UC patients and epigenetic profiling in lymphocytes from AD patients, and provide integrative analysis of clinical and multidimensional Omics data. HUNIMED, as leader of work package 3 will give support and coordination of the activities aiming at evaluating and optimizing the disruptive liquid biopsies technology Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Stimulation -enabled gut liquid biopsy for gut diseases. This will include a preclinical study on mice and clinical studies on human.