AI Summary
A team led by Professor Emma Teeling has won a €12 million grant to study bats and their potential secrets to health and longevity. The project, called 'BATPROTECT', aims to understand bats' extended healthspan and disease resistance. The team consists of 22 researchers from various fields. This research could lead to new ways to slow down human aging and disease resistance.
Do bats hold the secret to health and longevity? A team led by Professor Emma Teeling, Full Professor of Zoology at University College Dublin (UCD), has won a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy grant of almost €12 million, to explore this fascinating question.
The ERC Synergy grants support ambitious researchers to join forces and pool different skills, knowledge and resources to push the frontiers of our knowledge and address some of the world’s most formidable problems.
Professor Teeling has pioneered global research into the development of bats as new models for healthy ageing and disease tolerance. She will lead the groundbreaking Synergy project ‘BATPROTECT’, involving a team of 22 researchers – including leading experts from Germany and Singapore. The project is expected to achieve a step-change in our understanding of bats’ extended healthspan and disease resistance.
We have just been given the most extraordinary opportunity to finally harness the amazing adaptations of bats and provide new ways to slow down human ageing and disease resistance. This ERC Synergy grant has enabled us to unite the fields of bat biology, virology, immunology, genomics and gerontology, across Europe and Asia, in order to achieve our goals.
We are thrilled and excited to work together and uncover how we can live longer, healthier lives by learning from bats. I would like to thank the Irish Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland for initially funding this research and Enterprise Ireland for their support.”
Professor Emma Teeling, Full Professor of Zoology, University