Dr Marco Monopoli from RCSI has been awarded a €4.2 million H2020 Marie Sklodowska Curie European Training Network (ETN) grant for ground-breaking research to guide development of new drug delivery applications. The highly prestigious grant will support the NanoCarb ETN project in nanomedicine to advance healthcare innovation in medical diagnostics and in the treatment of cancer.

NanoCarb will combine the field of nanotechnology and carbohydrate chemistry to synthesize, test and validate the therapeutic efficacy of new generation nanoparticles that can safely reach diseased tissue in a targeted therapy that is less toxic and more effective. The project will also facilitate the transition from laboratory research into clinical studies.

Led by Dr Monopoli, RCSI StAR Researcher Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry, NanoCarb is a multidisciplinary consortium including universities, research centres, SMEs and a large company with broad expertise in the fields of synthetic chemistry, polymer chemistry, glycoprofiling and biochemistry. It was one of the highest ranked projects in the Chemistry Panel evaluated in the ETN call of 2018 (ranked #3).

NanoCarb ETN will seek to train a new generation of creative and innovative multidisciplinary early-stage researchers in multiple fields through an integrated research-training programme in academia, industry and research centre environments.

The first NanoCarb meeting was held recently in RCSI, bringing together academics, senior industry representatives, research collaborators, trainers and the national contact person for Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions to begin work on the project.

RCSI is ranked among the top 250 (top 2%) of universities worldwide in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2019) and its research is ranked first in Ireland for citations. It is an international not-for-profit health sciences institution, with its headquarters in Dublin, focused on education and research to drive improvements in human health worldwide. RCSI has been awarded Athena SWAN Bronze accreditation for positive gender practice in higher education.