Last week, the kick-off meeting of the European project VISI-ON-BRAIN: Cutting-edge Human In Vitro and In Silico Biomedical Tools on Brain Disorders took place. This is a training and research programme for fifteen doctoral researchers, focused on developing next-generation human models to advance the study of complex brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.
The key aspect of the initiative is the paradigm shift it proposes, as the research moves away from animal models and seeks a more ethical science based on experimental (in vitro) and computational (in silico) models.
The project is led by Josep Maria Canals, from the IDIBAPS research group Pathophysiology and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. Canals is also a professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB), a member of the UB Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro), and director of the Centre for the Production and Validation of Advanced Therapies (Creatio), also at the UB.
Neuroscience: new ethical models for studying human biology
The field of biomedical R&D is undergoing a transformation towards scientific innovation without the use of laboratory animals and the promotion of more ethical and effective science for humans. In Europe, this includes a EC roadmap to phase out animal testing, as well as a call from the European Parliament to accelerate the transition with clearer objectives and timelines. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has outlined a plan to reduce animal testing in preclinical safety studies and to expand new approach methodologies (NAMs), which include advanced computational systems and in vitro methods.
Neuroscience makes this transition mission-critical: the development of therapeutic agents to address neurodegeneration has experienced exceptionally high failure rates, underscoring the need to establish models that better reflect human biology and disease progression. The EU’s most ambitious competitive push — through the ‘Choose Europe for Life Sciences’ strategy and the European Biotechnology Act — reinforces this guideline by translating results from the laboratory to the market, boosting innovation uptakes and accelerating the real-world impact of research.
VISI-ON-BRAIN is designed to close the translational gap by building an integrated chain of predictive, reproducible, and clinically established experimental and computational tools, while training researchers who can operate at the interface of biology, data, engineering, and regulatory relevance.
VISI-ON-BRAIN: a pan-European, cross-sector training and research platform
The programme brings together 15 academic, clinical and industrial partners from eight European countries, a structure that will enable PhD researchers to combine innovation in laboratories with advanced models, analysis and translational validation. The project is coordinated by the UB through Creatio. The beneficiary consortium includes the Technical University of Denmark (Denmark), the Prinses Máxima Centrum for Paediatric Oncology (Netherlands), the University of Tübingen (Germany), Lund University (Sweden), Cardiff University and King’s College London (United Kingdom), the National Research Council (Italy), Starlab Barcelona SL (Spain) and FRESCI (Spain). Associate members are the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy), Utrecht University (Netherlands), VeriGraft (Sweden), San Raffaele Hospital SRL (Italy) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) (Italy).
Why is this important? From more data to better evidence
Brain disorders are a major challenge for global health and a substantial societal and economic burden. VISI-ON-BRAIN will accelerate the development of relevant decision-making tools for patient treatment, enabling more go/no-go decisions, de-risk translation and improving the efficiency of discoveries and therapeutic development. Beyond science, it is an investment in workforce and competitiveness: it is about training doctoral researchers who can move easily between academia, clinical research and industry, and help NAMs, from promising methods to validated practices, always in line with evolving expectations.
In this context, the UB promotes scientific innovation without the use of experimental animals and the promotion of more ethical and effective science for humans, with the creation of the Hub for Alternative Methods to Animal Experimentation, coordinated by Professor Josep M. Canals.
VISI-ON-BRAIN is funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement N. 101227124. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
