SENECA

Due to the increasing aging of the population, the investigation and prevention of age-related diseases is of central importance to health care and are part of the core research topics of the Institute for Biomedicine. As a specific example, the risk of developing cancer increases significantly with age. Cellular aging processes, known as cellular senescence, play a causal role in this process. Senescence also affects the cells of the immune system and leads to a decrease in immune system function and, by weakening cancer defenses, to an increased risk of cancer in old age.

The aim of the SENECA project is to decipher the cellular processes of aging and to search for new therapeutic agents against cancer. The strengths of the SENECA network lie in the complementary and synergistic expertise of the partners involved, who are already working together successfully in joint collaborative projects. By integrating multidisciplinary approaches, combined with targeted training measures for young scientists and comprehensive dissemination strategies, SENECA aims to make a visible and sustainable contribution to strengthening the research and innovation competence of cross-border regions in the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases.

The network was initially established for the EPIC Interreg project and is being continued for the SENECA project. The network's broad expertise is represented by

• Prof. Claudio Brancolini, lead partner at the University of Udine, with a long-term record on cancer research: his laboratory is specialized on cancer cell models and designs experiments involving next generation sequencing techniques for gene activity and spatial arrangement of DNA in the cell nucleus.
• Prof. Fulvia Felluga from the University of Trieste, who is specialized in organic chemistry. During our collaboration within the EPIC project, the lab in Trieste provided computationally enhanced compounds and synthesized them for testing in the partner labs. This role will be maintained for the SENECA project, where our goal is to improve compounds that counteract cellular senescence.
• Prof. Fritz Aberger and Prof. Jutta Horejs-Hoeck from the University of Salzburg being experts in oncogenic signaling and tumor:immune system interactions, with emphasis on specific tumor-related pathways. Both labs perform complementary research and thus provide double added value to SENECA's research aims.
• Dr. Christian X. Weichenberger from Eurac Research, who provides expertise in computational and statistical analysis of large datasets. The bioinformaticians at Eurac are dedicated data miners and have a record on analyzing sequencing data from various sources and putting them in context utilizing a variety of bleeding edge computational methods and biological databases.

The SENECA team is looking forward to a fruitful collaboration resulting in exciting research, novel insights, scientific publications, sharing ideas on conferences and performing public relations communication, all based on a group of highly motivated researchers, both junior and senior.