Probing safety of nano-objects by defining immune responses of environmental organisms

    Project Details

    Description

    PANDORA will train 11 PhD students in an overarching training programme that will include training-by-research, joint courses of technical, scientific, ethical and transferrable skills, active participation to public scientific events, and an intense intersectoral networking exchange plan. The PANDORA consortium encompasses academic institutions, research centres, and SMEs, all with proven experience in higher education and training, and endowed with state-of-the art scientific and technical expertise and infrastructures. PANDORA (Probing safety of nano-objects by defining immune responses of environmental organisms) aims at assessing the impact of engineered nano-objects (nanoparticles, NP) on the immune and defensive responses of organisms in the environment. Immunity is a major mechanism for the survival and fitness of practically all living organisms, thus immunosafety of engineered NP should be considered a key element of environmental nanosafety. PANDORA will tackle the issue of global immunological nanosafety by comparing the effects of a selected number of NP of wide application (iron, titanium and cerium oxide) on the immune response of several earth and marine organisms in parallel to human. The highly conserved system of innate immunity/stress response/ inflammation will be the focus of PANDORA, as this would allow us to identify common reactivity across immune defence evolution. The NP effects will be evaluated on the innate and inflammatory responses of plants, marine and earth invertebrates (bivalves, echinoderms, earthworms), and compared to those on vertebrate (human) innate immunity. The scientific and technological goals of PANDORA include: 1. Assessing safety of 3 types of NP on the immune defence capacity of living organisms (from plants to humans); 2. Identifying common mechanisms/markers of reactivity predictive of risk vs. safety; 3. Designing predictive in vitro assays to detect the immuno-risk of NP for human health and the environment.
    AcronymPANDORA
    StatusFinished
    Effective start/end date1/01/1631/12/19

    Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012

    • 211 Other Technical Sciences
    • 301 Medical-Theoretical Sciences, Pharmacy

    Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012 (6-digit codes)

    • 301902 Immunology
    • 211914 Risk research

    Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2002

    • 2950 Risk research
    • 3411 Immunology
    • 2968 Nanotechnology