As a result of decreasing mortality and birth rates in Europe, the expense of caring for the ageing population places an ever increasing burden on national economies. It is every human being's right to live with dignity and the absence of suffering throughout his/her lifespan, but our lack of knowledge on systemic, organ, tissue and cell degeneration due to senescence do mean that the ageing process is often beyond our control. Research on ageing is carried out in thousands of laboratories focusing on the one hand at the cellular level in areas of genetics, molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, and epigenetics and on the other hand on the study of animal models.
Most models of aging at the cellular level are derived from simple in-vitro experiments, while animal models range from fish to non-human primates. Aging however is not just a process occurring in single cells, but is also associated with changes in the physiological microenvironment and alterations in signaling between cells and even distant tissues and organs, leading to systemic age related diseases such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular dysfunction and cognitive impairments. Between the cell and animal models, there is certainly a gap in our knowledge as far as systemic and extracellular aging is concerned. The MIND project aims at overcoming the current lack of models for the study of the physiological conditions associated with aging through the development of in vitro dynamic models, able to reproduce the physio-pathological conditions of aged tissues, while respecting the 3 Rs ("Replacement, Refinement, Reduction") principle of animal testing.
The multidisciplinary consortium, composed mainly of bioengineers, flanked by clinicians, biologists, experts in the regulatory aspects of health and physical and electronic engineers, will pool its varied expertise and knowledge to design, realize, model and characterize new systems for the investigation of ageing and age related diseases, with reference to four tissues which are particularly compromised by age related degeneration: cardiac, bone, epithelial and neural tissue.
The project represents a first step towards the long-term goal of generating reliable biomimetic models of tissues for the study of pathological conditions and the development of pharmacological strategies, reducing animal and clinical testing, as well as the time and costs associated with them. To reach these ambitious project goals, around 600 person months of research personnel from eleven partners, including permanent staff (researchers and laboratory technicians) and Post-docs and Ph.D students are involved.