Short Profile

The project Medical Genomics and Epigenomics Network (MEDGENET) is a 3-year H2020 TWINNING project initiated on 1st January 2016.

TWINNING is a new instrument of the Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation (SEWP) part of Horizon 2020 program. The philosophy of H2020 TWINNING projects lies in strengthening of a specific research field in a knowledge institution through linking it with internationally-leading partners via a number of institutional networking and training activities, including workshops, conferences, summer schools, and expert visits, as well as study visits, internships and counselling. The aim of the SEWP projects, including TWINNING, is to increase research quality and prestige of a coordinating institution from a country with lower efficiency in research, development and innovation through knowledge transfer and exchange of practices with leading institutions.

The main goal of MEDGENET consortium is to use synergies and existing expertise in EU leading partner institutions – EMBL, Uppsala University and CERTH, to reinforce the productivity and competitiveness of the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) of Masaryk University (MU) in the field of medical genomics and epigenomics.

All consortium members are intensively analysing human genome and its relation to development of various diseases, mainly tumors. The project has a clear strategy based on combination of unique complementary skills of partner institutions that will lead to effective knowledge transfer in designing specific tools for disease diagnostics, treatment, prognosis assessment, and prevention in order to develop targeted therapy and personalised medicine. Stimulation of knowledge exchange, implementation of cutting edge technologies and mastery of modern genomics and bioinformatics methodologies will have a direct impact on the overall research and innovation potential of CEITEC and will increase its visibility in the international scientific community.

MEDGENET intends to create a well-educated taskforce of biomedical researchers, who will notably contribute to the development of new genomics and bioinformatics tools and their application in clinical practice. It will enable establishing the best practices for performing innovative and high-quality biomedical research which results can be translated into high value-added clinical applications.