New European Institute To Concentrate on Treatment Strategies for Atherosclerosis

A European initiative to establish an institute to focus funding and coordinate projects to accelerate development of new drugs and therapies for treatment of atherosclerosis and heart disease was announced at the EuroBioForum conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, December 5-7, 2007. EuroBioForum is the annual conference of EuroBioFund, which was established in 2006 to bring together public and private sources of funding to catalyze the development of large-scale pan-European life science research programs.

The new European Vascular Biology Institute (EVBI) will concentrate primarily on atherosclerosis, the underlying cause of 80% of all cardiovascular related deaths including myocardial infarction and strokes, as well as other conditions such as tissue death and organ failure. More specifically, the EVBI will encourage development of strategies to both block progress of atherosclerosis through drug therapies and vaccination, and also to deal with the related diseases, for example via stem cell based therapies to repair the heart after myocardial infarction.

Toward this end the EVBI will exploit existing research platforms, notably the zebra fish animal model, which allows the close monitoring and analysis of vascular disease progression and the action of therapies.


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EuroBioForum