Leishmania causes devastating human diseases – leishmaniases - representing an important public health problem in the Mediterranean basin and declared as emerging diseases in the EU due to climate change and population displacement. The LeiSHield-MATI consortium will for the first time investigate in an integrative fashion the complex parasite-vector-host interplay in cutaneous leishmaniasis affecting Morrocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Iran (MATI), using field isolates and human clinical samples. The ultimate goal of our project is to identify genetic factors selected during natural infection and to understand how the complex parasite-vector-animal interaction impacts clinical outcome in infected patients. This goal will be achieved through a highly ambitious secondment plan between all partners, and the organization of courses and workshops to train the next generation of scientists generating a long-term impact on the research capacities in endemic areas. Capitalizing on complementary infrastructures of its EU, African and Asian partners and their expertise in molecular parasitology, epidemiology, systems level analyses, bioinformatics, computational biology, immunology, dermatology, field studies, and public health, our project will drive important innovation in clinical research, strengthen capacities in disease endemic regions, inform authorities on control measures, and raise awareness in all partner countries on this emerging EU public health problem. The highly inter-disciplinary and inter-sectorial structure of LeiSHield-MATI, and its powerful integrative and comparative approach is novel in parasitic systems and will drive a unique bio-marker discovery pipeline for the future development of new prognostic and diagnostic tools, as well as novel preventive and therapeutic measures that will ensure long-term collaboration, promote scientific and commercial self-sustainability of its partners, and will have an important impact to improve public health.

Complications related to infectious diseases have significantly reduced, particularly in the developed countries, due to the availability and use of broad-range antibiotics and wide variety of antimicrobial agents. Excessive use of antibiotics and antimicrobial agents increased significantly the number of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria. This has resulted in a serious threat to public health. The inexorable rise in the incidence of antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens, coupled with the low rate of emergence of new clinically useful antibiotics, has refocused attention on finding alternatives to overcome antimicrobial resistance. Novel strategies aiming to reduce the amount of antibiotics, but able to prevent and treat animal and human infections should be investigated, evidenced and approved. Among the various approaches, the use of graphene and its derivatives is currently considered a highly promising strategy to overcome microbial drug resistance. In line with this interest in graphene by the European Commission through the graphene ‘flagship’ initiatives, we respond in this consortium by exploring the utility of novel graphene based nanocomposites for the management and better understanding of microbial infections. The anti-microbical potential of the novel graphene based nanomaterials, the possibility of using such structures for the development of non-invase therapies together with the understanding of the mechanism of action will be the main focal points of the proposed project entitled “PANG”, relating to Pathogen and Graphene. We have gathered the essential elements, namely different academic institutions in Europe (France, Germany, and Sweden) and their associated countries (Ukraine) as well as two European companies (Graphenea-Spain and LSO Medical-France) and one company (RS RESEARCH) in one of the associated countries (Turkey). The proposed multidisciplinary project uniquely suits high-level interdisciplinary and cross-border training.

This research project will examine a history of views of pre-Christian Scandinavia that begins in the High Middle Ages and continues in the present day, focusing on a persistent association between runic inscription, eddic poetry, and magic. Rather than continuities or survivals of pre-Christian practices into the Christian period, this research will reveal them as fundamentally High to Late Medieval practices (such as magical runic inscriptions using eddic meters, and eddic poetry referring to runes and magic) showing a form of alienated attraction toward the pagan past. The survival of this attitude will be traced through the Early Modern period, in which learned writers not only take these Medieval Christian textual objects at face value, but also reproduce their stance of alienated attraction, continuing to view the pre-Christian past as a source of esoteric knowledge. Finally, we see this view continually reproduced through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries even as modern philology continues to develop. In this period, we also see both “serious” scholarship on this subject and para-academic occultist interest in it become increasingly entangled with the politics of the far right. Ultimately this research will reveal the continuing stance of alienated attraction as a form of runic “kitsch.” The project will be carried out in four phases to cover the necessary methodological concerns and sources from three periods (Medieval, Early Modern, Modern). The results will be disseminated as a monograph manuscript, as well as in media articles and through papers given at international conferences.