Relevance consortium project in brief

RELEVANCE is an international consortium of thirteen partners representing academic research centres, diagnostic labs, blood supply centres, and small industries that combines basic and translational research to improve prognostic, diagnostic and therapeutic approaches on red blood cells production, function, and clearance in healthy humans and patients.

We came together to build a team of 15 early stage researchers, educate them, and engage into interactive multidisciplinary work within five major topics will be addressed within individual work packages:

• WP1 - Diagnostic tools on red blood cells;
• WP2 - Red blood cells as treatment targets in pathophysiological conditions;
• WP3 - Red blood cell interactions with other cells and tissues;
• WP4 - Red blood cell transfusions with a focus on storage and conservation of blood donations on the one side and the in vitro production of red blood cells on the other;
• WP5 - Red blood cells in exercise and training including aspects of doping control.

The ESRs will get a chance to spend 3 years in a foreign country as they can only be employed in a state different from the state they lived and worked in for more than 12 months during the past 3 years. Secondments of at least 2 months will be performed with one or more partner groups. Training sessions organised by the teams in Amsterdam, Saarbrucken and Zurich will introduce the ESRs to novel state-of-art experimental techniques, newest updates in science and medicine, and provide information needed for successful carrier developments in research, medicine or industry in the future.