The ERA Chair GCure - From Gene to Cure, coordinated by Luís Pereira de Almeida, president of the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC-UC), coordinator of the Center for Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CiBB) and professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy (FFUC), will receive 2.5 million euros.

This funding will make it possible to boost gene therapy research at the University of Coimbra (UC) over five years. The project is funded by Horizon Europe under the ERA Chairs, a European Commission funding mechanism that supports universities and research centers so that they can attract and retain qualified human resources, creating new research teams and, at the same time, boosting excellent research in response to various societal challenges. All ERA Chairs have the collaboration of an ERA Chair Holder, a specialist of recognized international merit who will monitor the entire implementation of the project.

GCure represents a strategic effort to strengthen UC's capacity and visibility at the forefront of research and innovation in gene therapy, a scientific field that results in the generation of medicines using genetic material (DNA or RNA) to treat or prevent the causes of diseases. It is also expected to contribute to significant advances in health and well-being. The ERA Chair Holder will be Professor Jude Samulski, from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, considered one of the fathers of gene therapy.

GCure joins three other ERA Chairs at the UC, winning a total of 9.7 million euros from the European Commission to fund four capacity-building and research projects in different scientific areas - obesity, biomaterials, music, and gene therapy - OBICODE: Biocultural Transmissions of Obesity across Generations in the Digital Era, coordinated by Cristina Padez, BIOBASED2UC: Exploring novel bio-based materials and their applications in conservation and restoration with a new interdisciplinary team, coordinated by José Gamelas, and MusicAnalytica: Interdisciplining Music Studies through the Reconfiguration of Theoretical and Analytical Knowledge, coordinated by José Oliveira Martins.

In this call for ERA Chairs, the UC is leading four of the eight projects funded in Portugal, and 38 projects have been approved at European level.

The GCure ERA Chair is another important contribution to leveraging excellence in gene therapy, joining the Teaming GeneT project that leads this effort at the UC. Other ERA Chairs have already been implemented at CiBB in previous years - CNC-UC: EXCELScIOR, in 2022, and DYNABrain, in 2020; iCBR-FMUC: ERAatUC, in 2015.

Catarina Ribeiro w/ CNC-UC