The European Commission awards its 50th European Industrial Doctorate (EID)
research grant today. The €1.5 million grant is for research into new
antibodies that will destroy a tumour's blood vessels and eradicate the tumour.
The so-called VAMPIRE project ('Vascular Antibody-Mediated Pharmaceutically
Induced tumour Resection') is led by the University of Birmingham in the UK and
SomantiX, a Dutch biotech company based in Utrecht. The research is supported
by associated European universities, companies and research centres including
Swiss science and technology university ETH Zurich and the charity Cancer
Research UK. The EID scheme is targeted at projects which bring together
business and academic partners in two countries.
The European Industrial Doctorate was launched as a pilot project in 2012
as part of the Marie Curie Actions (MCA),
the European research fellowship programme. The aim of the EID scheme is to
provide PhD candidates with professional experience in excellent research
projects, as well as to attract more young people into scientific careers.
