Inflanet: Training the Next Generation of Inflammation Experts

[Article] - Published on March 28, 2023 in Major Programs, University-Industry Partnerships

Since early 2021, the LPHI laboratory has been coordinating an international project dedicated to the study of the inflammatory process. Inflanet brings together eight universities and research centers, as well as two companies, across seven European Union countries. This makes it not only an innovative interdisciplinary research project but also a training program that includes 15 doctoral fellowships to train the next generation of European experts in inflammation.

It is a scientifically proven fact: inflammation is linked to numerous conditions, particularly chronic diseases, in the Western world. This has a significant impact on society, whether in terms of patients’ quality of life or the additional cost of health care. Hence the importance of research on this topic.“Many researchers are studying inflammation, and new drugs are being developed, yet we still don’t always fully understand why inflammation is exacerbated in certain diseases,” acknowledges Dr. Mai Nguyen-Chi, a CNRS researcher at the Host-Pathogen Interactions Laboratory (LPHI), which specializes in the study of infectious processes.

Along with Georges Lutfalla, director of the LPHI, she is also the scientific co-coordinator of an ambitious project: Inflanet.“The guiding principle of Inflanet’s scientific program is to try to understand how inflammation develops, how—when it is dysregulated—it leads to inflammatory diseases, and, of course, to work on finding treatments,”explains Dr. Mai Nguyen.Sheadds:“When exacerbated, inflammation can lead to a wide variety of diseases. That is why it is important to study them.”Among the conditions targeted are many cancers, in which inflammation plays a central role, as well as infections, inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), and rare genetic disorders such as type 1 interferonopathies.  

15 doctoral students

Launched in 2021, Inflanet is a European-wide program that falls under the MSC-ITN-2020-Innovative Training Networks call for proposals. Like all projects supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie international research network, it brings together a consortium of universities, research organizations, and companies. With a total budget of nearly 4 million euros, Inflanet brings together eight universities, two research centers, and two private-sector companies from seven different European countries: France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Germany.

Each of these twelve organizations, including industrial partners, is required to recruit one or two doctoral students; the University of Montpellier and the LPHI laboratory have even recruited three each, for a total of 15 future experts in inflammation who will be involved in the project through the end of February 2025.  Coming from various fields (biology, mathematics, physics, genomics), they are all participating in the collaborative research project titled“Training European Experts in Inflammation: from the molecular players to animal models and the bedside.” Each year, a seminar brings all participants together. This is an opportunity to take stock of the work in progress, but also to foster interactions while promoting learning. This is because the Inflanet collaborative research project also includes a training component designed to strengthen interdisciplinary and intersectoral cooperation.

Mandatory immersion

Thus, throughout the project, students are offered training that truly complements their initial education through a wide-ranging schedule of workshops: research management, intellectual property, open science, MOOCs, serious games, writing grant proposals… Not to mention in-depth discussions on ethics, responsibility, and diversity in research. Another unique feature of the project is the“secondment,” a type of supervised internship.“Ph.D. students are required to complete at least one secondment —that is, a period of secondment—in at least one laboratory or at an industrial partner within the network,” explains Veronika Peciarova, Inflanet project manager.  Currently, a PhD student from the CNRS and a PhD student from Leiden University in the Netherlands are spending two months in Montpellier, while Resul, a biology PhD student from Montpellier, is currently in Bratislava working with a team of mathematicians on the identification of immune cells.

A fruitful experience on both an individual and collective level.“That’s the value of interdisciplinarity: There are certain things we can’t do as biologists, so we collaborate with physicists or mathematicians, which opens up new horizons for us to develop different analytical tools—and quite simply, to see things differently…,” notes Dr. Nguyen-Chi. As for working with industry partners, this encourages the development of innovative approaches linked to cutting-edge technologies. The German company Acquifer develops systems designed to automate drug screening, while the Slovak company Tatramed offers solutions related to medical imaging analysis. Industrial partners benefit from this collaboration with academia to improve their products—a virtuous cycle that facilitates knowledge sharing and collective innovation.

Dr. Nguyen-Chi explains:“We generate videos related to inflammation—for example, to track immune cells, such as macrophages or neutrophils—in order to understand how they are recruited, how they become activated, and how they disperse. The fact that they disperse is very important for resolving inflammation.Teams of biologists use microscopy to create videos that visualize these cells so that mathematicians can then identify them and develop tools to track them over time. This helps us understand not only how they are drawn to a particular site, but also how they might escape from it! ” Ultimately, the interdisciplinary Inflanet project, scheduled to conclude in February 2025, should help develop new therapeutic strategies while training a new generation of European experts in inflammation—experts capable of taking a holistic view and adopting an innovative approach to the inflammatory process. Quite a program.

Keywords: Innovation, Programs, Research, University