A Comprehensive Translational Research and Training Pipeline Harnessing Lipid Metabolism to Improve Prostate Cancer Management and Educate Young Researchers in Tackling Complex Disease

PROSTAMET is an immersive Doctoral Network (DN), that aims to train the next generation of researchers tackling complex multifactorial diseases, including cancer, that are typically characterized by an outspoken inter- and intra-patient heterogeneity and that increasingly face our ageing society. Despite unprecedented technological advances to dissect disease into its smallest details, the translation into cost-effective and personalised treatment approaches is one of the timeliest challenges that face the scientific community and that require a specific transdisciplinary mindset and education. Focusing on prostate cancer as a key paradigm of such a complex disease and as one of European Health Union’s new focus areas for organised screening, PROSTAMET aims to bridge current gaps in translational research, capitalising on the underexplored clinical potential of altered lipid metabolism in cancer. Through a close collaboration among well-selected academic and non-academic partners with highly complementary expertise, PROSTAMET aims to set up a unique lipid-focused translational research pipeline from cutting-edge spatially-resolved molecular discovery, through validation in gold-standard models, all the way to innovative drug development. Through its modular and bidirectional nature with multiple entry points, this pipeline is expected to generate outputs at multiple levels of the drug development chain for sustainable downstream valorisation. Through a combination of high-level technological “hands-on” research, non-academic placements and courses/workshops on scientific and complementary “soft” skills facilitated by the academic/non-academic composition of the consortium, PROSTAMET’s ambition is to provide young researchers with a creative and holistic view on translational research along with strong transferable skills to prepare them to take up thriving careers in a transformative health care system focusing on personalised precision medicine.