Advanced Grant from the European Research Council to project headed by Harald Stenmark

H.A. Stenmark
H.A. Stenmark

Harald Stenmark from the Department of Biochemistry at the Institute for Cancer Research has recently been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), amounting to 2.27 mill Euro over a period of 5 years for running the project "The PI3K-III complex: Function in cell regulation and tumour suppression".

The ERC is the new initiative from EU to support basal research. In contrast with ordinary EU announcements, ERC funding is solely based on scientific quality, and any field of research may apply.

Only four Norwegians were awarded ERC Advanced grants in the first application round. In addition to Harald Stenmark, the recipients were Eiliv Lund (cancer epidemiology, Tromsø), Edvard Moser (memory research, Trondheim) and Bernt Øksendal (mathematics, Oslo).

The ERC Advanced Investigator Grants, known as Advanced Grants, aim to encourage and support excellent, innovative investigator-initiated research projects by leading advanced investigators across the EU Member States and Associated Countries. This funding stream complements the Starting Grant scheme by targeting the population of researchers who have already established themselves as being independent research leaders in their own right. ERC Advanced Grants provide an opportunity to established scientists and scholars to pursue frontier research of their choice. Applicants for Advanced Grants are expected to be active researchers who have a track record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years.

About the project:
The PI3K-III complex: Function in cell regulation and tumour suppression.
Interactions between proteins and cellular membranes are essential for most physiological processes, but we still know little about how the functions of cytosolic protein complexes are coordinated with membrane rearrangements.

In this project, the functions of a cytosolic lipid kinase complex (PI3K-III) and its membrane-bound reaction product will be characterized in-depth in order to understand how these molecules function in membrane dynamics and tumour suppression.

The project involves thorough biochemical characterisations of the lipid kinase complex, in situ imaging of its reaction product using novel assays, detailed cell biological studies of relevant trafficking and signalling pathways, and novel Drosophila models for oncogenesis.

Links:
Harald Stenmark's group - Intracellular Communication
Department of Biochemistry
Institute for Cancer Research
European Research Council Home Page

In Norwegian:
Norsk kreftforsker får 19 millioner (from www.forskningsradet.no - The Research Council of Norway)
Norsk kreftforsker får 19 millioner EU-kroner (from vg.no - Norway's largest newspaper)

 

 
May 19, 2009
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