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.