Influence of the Cell Membrane Asymmetry and Curvature on the Functioning of Membrane Proteins and the Transport of Therapeutic Compounds

H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 690853 — assymcurv

Identify major physical factors which govern the physical shapes of cell’s membranes, ii) to investigate diffusion of drugs and motions of large integral membrane proteins inside membranes.

Networking goal

Create large international network working on realistic membranes by computational and experimental techniques.

  • Ukraine
  • France
  • Latvia
  • Estonia
  • USA
  • Brazil

Events: organized and prospective

  • International workshop “Asymmetry of biological membranes: physical, biological and biomedical aspects”, April 28-29, 2016 Besançon, France (funded separately by IncoNet EaP Twinning grant N° 609508).
  • Working meeting of experimental teams in Riga, Latvia, July 2017 (funded separately).
  • International conference “Nanobiophysics-2017”, Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2-5 October 2017.
  • International workshop on biological membranes, Besançon, France (2018 or 2019).

Transfer of knowledge and job opportunities

  • V. Boiko moved to Wroclaw Politechnica University Poland to get a new and better position for 3 years.
  • Secondments provided by EU will certainly contribute to S. Foley and B. Cardey Habilitations in France.
  • S. Yesylevskyy is actually applying for a MSC/ERC grant named “Squamem” with Chrono-Environment Lab as a host and P. Couvreur Lab as a secondment.
  • C. Ramseyer will certainly apply for ERC grant in 2019.


Management: general

  • The Institute of Physics of NAS of Ukraine can provide no support with project management:
  • Non-scientific departments of Ukrainian institutions don’t speak or read English
  • All management have to be performed by scientists themselves
  • Ukrainian legislation is in general incompatible with EU rules and principles.
  • For example – the project money are not freely available for the team. Any expenses allowed by the grant agreement have to be justified again locally.
  • All documents have to be translated to Ukrainian by ourselves (huge loss of time and efforts).
  • Many thanks to International department of UFC, which helps us professionally.

Management: changes in the teams

IOP NASU:

  • 2016: Evgeniy Chernyavsky (PhD student) -> Pavel Ivanchenko (ESR);
  • 2017: Pavel Ivanchenko (ESR) -> Marina Olenchuk (ER);
  • 2017: Vitalii Boyko (ESR) -> Ivan Severin (student).

UFC:

  • 2017: + Mariia Savenko (student);
  • 2018 :+ Thibault Minervini (PHD student).

UTARTU:

  • 2017: + Maksim Golub (ER).

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 690853