ECTS/Servier Fellowship - 2012

The European Calcified Tissue Society if pleased to announce the continuation of this award which will be increased to €80,000 (Euros) over a period of 2 years, which is supported by an educational grant from Servier.

2010 Award Announcement
The next award will be in 2012 and applications are now open. The 2012 award will be announced during the 39th European Symposium on Calcified Tissues in Stockholm 19-23 May 2010.
Application form

Deadline 11 November 2011

Eligibility

applicant to be within 10 years of gaining MD or PhD
applicant must be a European member of ECTS and be working in a European institution. Applications will be considered from European members who are working in an International institution if a strong case can be presented for performing the research outside of Europe
applicant may only apply for one award (i.e. applicants for the ECTS/Servier Fellowship may not apply for any other ECTS award in the current year)
applications to include details of a preclinical or clinical research project on the pathophysiology of osteoporosis and related matters
previous recipients of an ECTS Postdoctoral Fellowship, ECTS/Amgen/GSK Bone Biology Fellowship, ECTS/Servier Fellowship, ECTS Career Establishment award or ECTS PhD Studentship are not eligible to apply

Amount
€80,000 (Euros) payable in installments over a 2 year period

Please note

applicants are encouraged to seek funding from alternative sources for their research. However, successful applicants will be requested to complete a declaration form to state that they have not gained simultaneous funding from another organization towards the support of his/her salary for the same research project. Accordingly, the successful applicant is expected to inform ECTS in this event and the ECTS Board will make appropriate adjustments to the award, up to a complete withdrawal if the amount obtained from the other source covers 100% of the applicant’s salary
funds are not to be used for university/institution overheads
applications must be made on-line from the ECTS web site

Review Procedure
All applications are reviewed by an independent panel of reviewers and any conflicts of interest are identified and dealt with appropriately.
Successful applicants will be required to provide a report at the end of the fellowship period and to present the results of their work at an ECTS annual conference.

2010 Award

The 2010 ECTS/Servier Fellowship was announced during the 37th European Symposium on Calcified Tissues in Glasgow on Tuesday 29 June to Saba Adbulghani (Lisbon, Portugal). Many thanks are extended to Servier for supporting this award.

Saba Adbulghani (centre) with Professor Roland Baron – ECTS President (left) and François Camus, Servier International (right)

Project
Title:	Structural and mechanical evaluation of the mineral and organic phases in osteoporotic bone using an animal model of osteoporosis
Abstract of research:	Osteoporosis OP is as a systemic bone disease, characterised by low bone mass and microarchitectural deterioration of the bone tissue, leading to enhanced bone fragility and increased fracture risk. OP is believed to be linked to an imbalance in the remodeling process where more bone is being removed than is being rebuilt through cellular activities. Such imbalance is believed to induce changes in the bone’s components mineral and organic phases, which are responsible for its strength and stiffness, and consequently lead to degraded mechanical properties. Therefore the aim of this study is to characterise the bone’s mineral and organic phases during different stages of OP in a mouse model and show that such changes are responsible for the degraded mechanical properties of the osteoporotic bone which consequently lead to its higher fragility and increased fracture risk.

Previous awards

2009 Awards

Nicolas Vilayphiou (Lyon, France)

Osteoporosis is a skeletal disease affecting mostly postmenopausal women and decreasing the resistance to fracture of bones. Low bone mineral density has been determined as an indicator of risk for fragility fractures. However, about half of those fractures occur in postmenopausal women who not have osteoporosis defined on BMD criteria. So we need other techniques to improve the prediction of fracture. Bone mineral density is a surrogate for bone mass, but this does not directly predict its strength as mechanical parameters would do. Moreover, other parameters of bone quality must be taken into account, e.g. the bone microarchitecture. We propose to investigate jointly bone mineral density, bone microarchitecture and mechanical aspects with finite element analysis, and their relation to fragility fractures in a cohort of 890 women, aged from 26 to 92 years old.

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