Professor Frank Staal (Leiden University Medical Center) receives financial support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to include researchers from Ukraine in his research on stem cell based gene therapies. The support allows Ukrainian Professor Oksana Boyarchuk (I. Ya. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University) to join Staal’s NWO-NWA CURE4LIFE project. The collaboration provides an excellent case to study accessibility and availability of stem cell based gene therapies in non-Western European countries and leads to better diagnosis and treatment of inheritable immune disorders in Ukraine. In addition, it will facilitate research in Ukraine under difficult circumstances.
The Netherlands and Ukraine – partners in science
The war in Ukraine has also put pressure on scientific research in the country. For this reason, the Dutch Research Council NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) and National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU) recently opened a call for proposals in the context of the NWO-NRFU Partnership Initiative. The initiative allows Ukrainian researchers to collaborate with Dutch researchers and continue their scientific careers. Among the seven projects that were awarded support in the first round of the initiative is a collaboration between Ukrainian researcher Oksana Boyarchuk and Frank Staal. Boyarchuk and her team will join Staal’s ongoing CURE4LIFE project.
CURE4Life
The goal of the interdisciplinary CURE4LIFE project is to bring more gene therapies to the clinic. Staal: “Gene therapies are developed for a plethora of immune and metabolic diseases. Nevertheless, many of these therapies fail to reach the clinic and change the lives of patients. In CURE4LIFE, we aim to create a platform infrastructure that can be used for many diseases. This overcomes hurdles that prevent clinical implementation of approaches suited for a single condition”. Besides this, CURE4LIFE also addresses other challenges that hinder implementation of gene therapies such as regulation, reimbursement and public acceptance.
Mutual benefit
The new collaboration opens new possibilities for the Staal’s research. “Ukraine has many qualified physicians and researchers. However, financially Ukraine is vastly different from Western European countries. The situation is thereby an excellent case to study the availability and accessibility of gene therapies in similar countries and an addition to CURE4LIFE,” explains Staal. At the same time, the study is of special significance to Ukrainian patients. Staal: “There are relatively many patients in Ukraine with genetic immune diseases due to the presence of so-called founder mutations. This grant will lead to better diagnosis and state-of-the-art treatment by gene therapy for these patients.” Both parties will thus benefit from the initiative.