HESSP SIGNED

Project "HESSP" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

Understanding the human brain is one of the biggest scientific challenges of the 21st century, and this endeavor has led the European Union to launch the Human Brain Project (HBP) as a FET flagship project. However, even a flagship project such as the HBP cannot study all aspects of the human brain. One aspect that is not covered by the HBP is the extracellular space (ES). The ES of the brain is important in the field of neuropharmacology because it is key to the successful delivery of drugs to the neurons. Also, the importance of the metabolite clearance activity of the ES has led to proposing that a dysfunction of this process plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases. However, to the best of the eligible researcher’s knowledge, no initiative exists to create an ES simulation software that improves the research. To address this lack of simulation software, this proposal presents the Hippocampus Extracellular Space Simulator Project (HESSP). The HESSP’s goal is to develop a simulation software for how substances released by neurons and chemical substances that pass the blood-brain barrier diffuse through the ES. Specifically, the HESSP will create a software that simulates the diffusion process in the ES of the mouse’s hippocampus. The HESSP is an interdisciplinary project that involves computer science, neuroscience and pharmacology, and it addresses the challenge of developing a software architecture to simulate a diffusion process highly complex due to its number of elements formed. The hippocampus was chosen because it is a well-known structure, the results can be tested, and it is the earliest brain structure affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The HESSP will open a frontier line of research at the host university in collaboration with leading scientists in ES and neurodegenerative diseases. Additionally, the eligible researcher will acquire frontier knowledge in the simulation of complex biophysical processes and in neuroscience.