With the global population of menopausal women projected to reach 1.2 billion by 2030, menopause represents a critical yet understudied period in women's health. Hormonal changes during this transition pose significant risks to brain health, cognitive function, and emotional well-being, while increasing vulnerability to age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Despite its profound societal relevance, menopause-related brain changes remain poorly understood, with limited biomarkers and evidence-based interventions available. MenoBrain aims to fill this gap by training a new generation of 15 doctoral candidates to address the pressing challenges of menopause-related brain health. The DCs will work within a multidisciplinary and international network of 18 participants (11 beneficiaries and 7 partners) spanning neuroimaging, neuropsychology, endocrinology, microbiome research and bioinformatics. MenoBrain will employ cutting-edge methods including advanced neuroimaging (MRI, DTI, PET, EEG), host-microbiome modelling, and computational BrainAGE models. This integrated approach will explore how hormonal changes associated with menopause and interventions such as menopausal hormone therapy impact cognitive health, gut-brain communication, and aging trajectories. The programme combines scientific excellence with a robust training structure to equip MenoBrain doctoral candidates with expertise in interdisciplinary and intersectoral research, advanced technologies, and transferable skills. By leveraging state-of-the-art infrastructure, MenoBrain will discover biomarkers for early detection of cognitive dysfunction, improve therapeutic strategies, and advance personalized healthcare for menopausal women. MenoBrain not only addresses a critical gap in women's health research, but also aligns with the EU's agenda to promote healthy aging, gender-specific healthcare, and fostering innovative training for the next generation of leaders in science and industry.

The SQUEEZE consortium comprehensively addressed how biomarkers can be used to optimize disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA is a chronic immune-mediated disease with enormous health-related quality of life and socioeconomic impact. A broad choice of DMARDs with different targets is up to date available in clinical care, however without sufficient markers indicating the best choice for a particular patient, treatment strategies can be ineffective, cumbersome and expensive. The team of leading academic centres with a first-class record in translational and clinical research, together with patients and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) has set out to deliver a collaborative programme to advance the clinical application of biomarkers to improve benefit, safety, and value of approved DMARDs. SQUEEZE utilizes models from data science, clinical trials, translational science, and behavioural science to engage in a complementary, synergistic, and non-overlapping manner addressing the use of biomarkers to improve the ability to select the DMARD with the highest likelihood of fitting the immunophenotypic and clinical profile of the patient, to optimise dose and route of existing DMARDs; and to inform an innovative model of care focusing on patient´s preferences and needs to increase adherence to prescribed drugs. Through nine dedicated work packages SQUEEZE integrates to validate clinical, laboratory, molecular, digital and behavioural biomarkers to enable the recognition of patients with high likelihood of response to treatment and the selection of the drug with highest chance of benefit for an individual patient; and as such improve efficacy and safety of existing therapies (by squeezing the most out of existing drugs) in synergy with other EU-wide activities.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is the most common, chronic, inflammatory joint disease with a prevalence of about 1% of the adult population (22M patients worldwide and 7M in EU) and estimated to be responsible for 10,000 disability adjusted life years (DALY's) costing EU society €55B annually. Despite aggressive therapy, about a third of patients have to give up work within 5 years of disease onset mainly due to lack of response to multiple disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), multi-drug resistance (MDR). Thus, the main objective of this proposal is to define the clinical and molecular phenotypes leading to MDR in RA patients to prevent when possible or, when not possible, optimise the management of these patients. MDR-RA is highly relevant to the program, as these patients are often disabled, unable to work and paying a high personal and societal burden. Moreover, MDR-RA is under-researched and the underlying pathobiological mechanisms for resistance remain unknown, while as we have no predictors of therapeutic response to any of currently available drugs, inevitably treatment is based on trial-and-error. MDR-RA has the ambition of transforming care for these patients and deliver significant advances beyond the state-of-the-art methodologies, as for the first time, molecular pathology will be integrated into clinical, psychosocial, pain perception and imaging profiling in existing clinical cohorts to develop truly holistic predictive models for future clinical use (iCare-RA). The transformative potential of iCare-RA will be tested in a prospective randomised trial in comparison with routine standard of care, while its future implementation potential will be assessed through an early economic modelling. Finally, a strong management and dissemination strategy will facilitate further advancing science in the field, beyond the duration of the project, and future adoption by patients, specialist professional bodies, policy makers and regulatory authorities.