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The main objectives of MorphoPHEN are: (1) to construct an integrated interdisciplinary education programme on mouse morphological phenotyping; (2) to produce graduates with the skills that are needed to generate a positive impact on human disease models translatability (from the bench to the bedside); and (3) to develop a European and global approach for teaching a new discipline that improves the analysis and understanding of human disease models.
One of the biggest challenges facing the biomedical sciences and medicine is the dark genome. Much of the human genome is unexplored there remain thousands of genes for which we have little or no knowledge of function and their impact on disease. This is a very serious impediment to the development of a comprehensive understanding of the genetic bases of disease and progress in genomic medicine. If we are to make significant progress with understanding the mechanisms and pathological bases of disease, and develop and implement appropriate therapies, we need to address this challenge, which pervades all progress in the biomedical sciences.
The mouse remains the key genetic tool for exploring the dark genome. Mice represent over 60% of laboratory animals used in Europe for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as research institutions.
The transgenic and genetic manipulation technologies applied to the mouse have provided experimental understanding of a significant proportion of inherited diseases. A genetic mutation associated with human disease, when inserted into the mouse genome always induce some or all of the human disease phenotypes in the mouse. Accordingly, almost 95% of the human genes have a mouse homolog. As a direct consequence, loss-of-function mutation or disruption of the sequence within a gene in a mouse model is an important starting point for discovering and understanding normal gene function. The recent revolution in gene editing, the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, has also provided an additional and powerful approach to design and produce mouse models with the same insertion or deletion missense mutations that occur in the human genome and are responsible for a significant proportion of inherited or acquired human diseases.
The success of testing molecular disease hypotheses in genetically engineered mice has encouraged the development of massive global mouse projects: the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) and the European Research Infrastructure INFRAFRONTIER, which are producing a validated mutant mouse strain for each protein-coding gene. To date, these consortia have generated and characterised 8,457 mutant lines. Full up-take and utility of these new resources requires skills in the area of mouse anatomy, embryology, imaging and pathology. Adding to this, the increasing generation of models emerging from hypothesis or purpose-driven programmes is exceeding the capacity of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as public research institutions, to realize the full potential of these models. Limited access to morphological phenotyping expertise reduce the full value of research, with concomitant reduction in innovative discovery research, purpose-driven translational and industrial competitiveness in new therapeutic development. Furthermore, new research policies in Europe and globally drive demand for disease modelling expertise, e.g. the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine (ICPerMed) and the European priority for «Healthy Aging».
The MorphoPHEN programme adequately responds to the following EMJM objectives:
1) Foster quality, innovation, excellence and internationalisation in higher education institutions. The MorphoPHEN consortium will develop a complete multidisciplinary integrated master programme that will increase the excellence and innovation of university partners. The EMJM will be developed in an international environment with continuous interactions with private companies. The programme will feature an overarching quality control procedure; will reveal possible internal research and education deficits and stimulate partners to excel towards a common higher level. Similarly, international approaches, common experiences and varied contributions from partners will improve the outcomes of the EMJM.
2) Increase the quality and the attractiveness of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and support the EU's external action in the higher education field. It is our understanding that no single partner, within our consortium nor another individual universities in Europe or worldwide, can offer a comprehensive master programme in this specific field of mouse morphological phenotyping. The proposed programme is unique worldwide and will contribute to the implementation of EU policies and the strengthening of the portfolio of European education programmes. The programme will also be important for giving the European biomedicine industry further competitive advantages through better access to skilled professionals, thus contributing to Europe's international attractiveness and competitiveness. It will also support the European approach to AI. The ambition of MorphoPHEN is to train European and non-Europeans experts, who can become ambassadors for European expertise in their own countries.
3) Improve the level of competencies and skills of master graduates and in particular the relevance of the Joint Masters to meet the demands of the labour market, through an increased involvement of employers. The programme aims to prepare MorphoPHEN students to develop the next ground-breaking improvements in human disease models phenotyping throughout their career. The labor market for MorphoPHEN students is diverse, pharmaceutical and biomedicine companies, universities and research institutes, and to properly prepare our students the programme includes opportunities to meet future employers during their study so that employers can influence the learning of the students.

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Per informazioni dettagliate si consiglia la lettura del regolamento