Sabancı University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center - SUNUM's project application to the Marie Sklodowska-Curie – COFUND call, under the Scientific Excellence component of the Horizon Europe Program, received a score of 97/100 and has been funded by the European Commission by a total budget of 3.8 million Euros.
Project NANOBIO4CAN, a mobility fellowship program for postdoctoral researchers, aims to develop “Nano-Biotechnologies for Innovative Therapeutic Approaches in Cancer”.
As SUNUM coordinates the project as the 6550 Research Infrastructure, Izmir Biomedicine and Genome Center (IBG), Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM), and TÜBİTAK-MAM are the implementing organizations. In addition to industrial partners from Türkiye such as ATABAY, ILKO, GEN-ERA,TRUSTLIFE Ventures, ORGANO ID, University-Industry Collaboration Centers Platform of Turkey(USIMP), Ege Teknopark, Ataturk University 20 leading universities, technoparks, research centers and industrial organizations from many countries including Germany, the US, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Greece are also partners in the field of nano-biotechnology.
Project Coordinator and SUNUM Director Prof. Dr. Fazilet Vardar said that the NANOBIO4CAN Project aims to fund post-doctoral research on drug development, targeting and delivery systems as well as testing and validation systems for cancer therapy. She continued, “the NANOBIO4CAN Project is specially designed as an accelerator program to develop an entrepreneurial mindset among early-stage researchers in addition to their academic studies in cancer research. It will create a significant contribution to SUNUM’s efforts for commercialisation of research outputs in alignment with its strategic objectives as a National Research Infrastructure”
Within the scope of the project, which will last 60 months, 24 post-doctoral researchers will be employed by the project partner implementing organizations and carry out their research, while they will also have a chance to receive short-term training and research in relevant national and international partner institutions.