ECTS Career Establishment Award

2008 Award Announcement

The 2009 grant applications are now closed.
The 2010 awards will be announced in June 2009.

Description: The ECTS Career Establishment Award is intended to assist newly-appointed faculty members in launching a successful research career.

The purpose of these grants of up to 50,000 Euro (over 2-3 years) is:

• to help meet some of the immediate costs of initiating research
• to support and stimulate research on calcified tissues and related topics
• to serve as a recruitment tool to assist in attracting young researchers to the ECTS

Eligibility: Candidates must fulfil the following criteria

• must be a member of ECTS
• must be within 3 years of being appointed to their first faculty position as an independent researcher within a European Academic Research Institution
• must be working in an area of research relevant to the aims of the ECTS
• previous recipients of an ECTS Career Establishment, PhD Studentship, Postdoctoral Fellowship or Amgen Research Fellowship awards are not eligible to apply

Review Procedure

All applications are reviewed by an independent panel of reviewers and any conflicts of interest are identified and dealt with appropriately.

The final decision is based on the marks and comments from the reviewers and any conflicts of interest are identified and dealt with appropriately.

Report: Successful applicants will be required to:

• submit a written report on the progress of their research at the end of the grant period
• present a lecture during the European Symposium on Calcified Tissues as an invited speaker
• write a review article for Calcified Tissue International (the official journal of the ECTS)
  

The final instalment of the grant will be payable on receipt of the written report.

2008 Award

Two ECTS Career Establishment Awards were presented on Monday 26 May to Dr Frank de Vries from the Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands and Dr Julie Crockett from the University of Aberdeen, UK.

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2008 award winners Julie Crocket and Frank de Vries with 2007 winner Miep Helfrich

Dr de Vries will be working on a project entitled “Absolute Risk of Fracture in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: a Population-Based Cohort Study in the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands”

ABSTRACT

ECTS Career Establishment Award - Dr Frank de Vries

Multiple sclerosis MS is a chronic, inflammatory, demyelinating disease that affects the central nervous system CNS. Disease onset usually occurs in young adults, typically aged between 20 and 40 years, and is more common in women than in men. It affects about 2.5 million people worldwide. Patients with MS are increased risk of osteoporotic fracture due to instability, immobility and osteoporosis. Dutch data on file showed a significantly 5-fold increased risk of hip fracture. Furthermore, a substantial number of MS patients are being treated with systemic corticosteroids, which is a known risk factor for risk of fracture.

However, from a clinical point of view, it is currently unclear when, and in which patients with MS, fracture-preventing strategies should be initiated. Therefore, aim of this study is to estimate the absolute 5-years or 10-years risk of fracture in probably the World’s largest sample of over 32,000 MS patients, stratified by corticosteroid exposure.

Dr Crocket will be working on “CYR61: a novel osteoblast-derived inhibitor of osteoclast formation?”

ABSTRACT

ECTS Career Establishment Award - Dr Julie Crockett

We have recently found that CYR61, a member of the CCN family of proteins and secreted by osteoblasts, is a novel inhibitor of osteoclast formation in vitro. Bone-resorbing osteoclasts are formed by the differentiation and fusion of cells of the macrophage/monocyte lineage to form TRAP-positive, multinucleated cells. We have shown that, while osteoblasts express CYR61, osteoclasts and osteoclast precursors do not. The aim of this study is to determine whether osteoblast-derived CYR61 inhibits osteoclast formation in calvarial organ cultures and in co-culture assays of osteoblasts with bone marrow cells, using both overexpression and knockdown approaches. We will also make an expression construct for the generation of a transgenic mouse model to investigate the role of CYR61 in bone in vivo and will establish a programme of research aimed at elucidating the possible involvement of the CCN family of proteins in diseases such as osteoarthritis.

Previous award winners

2007 Award

ECTS is delighted to announce the winner of the 2007 award which was presented on 7 May 2007 during the 34th European Symposium on Calcified Tissues in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Dr Marcel Karperien from the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Dr Karperien will be working on a project researching the role of genes in bone formation which could have the potential to lead to a new treatment aimed at repairing cartilage tissue.

2006 Robert van ‘t Hof (Edinburgh, UK)

2005 Miep Helfrich (Aberdeen, UK)

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