Funding Research thanks to Thellie’s campaigns 

Published on October 21st, 2020, by Labtoo's team

Labtoo has partnered up with Thellie, a platform intended to discover, share and finance research projects by leading fundraising campaigns. Thellie finances Science by connecting researchers and donors who have a common goal: to accelerate R&D projects.

 

Successful fundraisings

Thellie has allowed many research projects to be funded in recent years. The oldest projects which have been successfully funded date from 2016, and the sanitary crisis of 2020, caused by COVID-19, has launched many projects on this particular research thematic.

One of them in particular , launched at the initiative of Mathieu Blot, Lionel Piroth and Christine Binquet, aims to characterize the immune response to serious pneumopathy induced by COVID-19. In fact, pneumonia remains the world’s leading cause of death with an infectious origin ; and the epidemic of pneumonia caused by COVID-19 is aggravating this situation. The consequence of this is a higher death rate caused by acute respiratory distress syndrome. Bacterial pneumonia is usually treated by antibiotics, but since coronavirus still does not have a cure, this pathology has become even more lethal. Moreover, a weak antiviral immune response could lead to a poor prognosis, while a more severe and uncontrolled immune response could lead to severe lung damage and organs dysfunction. The main goal of this research project is to have a better understanding of the immune response during severe pneumonia caused by COVID-19.

Thellie has helped to raise more than 28 000€ to fund this project, and a first letter showing the preliminary results of the study has been published in the “Clinical Infectious Diseases” journal.

Other projects have been successfully financed thanks to Thellie. This is also the case for a research project led by Stéphanie Baulac, which aims to study the activity of new molecules on the mTOR pathway in order to cure severe epilepsy on children. The project is divided in three parts: measure of the activity of mTOR on cerebral biological samples from epileptic patients, identification of molecules involved in autonomous non-cellular mechanisms, and testing of these molecules’ activity. With 300.000€ raised, this project will take place over two years, and aims to pave the way for innovative antiepileptic treatments.

 
 

Projects being financed

Several research projects in need of funds are currently being financed. There is for example a research project that aims to determine the microbiota’s impact on intestinal inflammation caused by cystic fibrosis. To achieve this, cultured colon epithelial cells are placed in contact with different microbiotas in order to study their gene and protein expression. The goal of this project is to have a better understanding of the microbiota’s implication in the genesis of intestinal inflammation for patients with cystic fibrosis, in order to develop therapeutic strategies afterwards. If the microbiota’s implication in the inflammation physiopathology is confirmed, a modulation (with probiotics for example) could be considered. A budget of 9.130€ is intended to realize this research project.

Other interesting projects are still being financed; do not hesitate to visit Thellie to discover and support them.

 
 

Many campaigns are still to come!

Several fundraising campaigns will be launched in the next days. Some of them are also linked to a COVID-19 research thematic; among them, a project that aims to determine the therapeutic effects of angiotensin II on patients with COVID-19. Angiotensin II binds to a common receptor with coronavirus and destroys it, which could therefore limit the patients’ infection and deterioration of respiratory state. Levels of angiotensin II are also decreased during an episode of COVID-19 infection: the purpose of this project is to evaluate the efficacity of an intravenous administration of angiotensin II to fight against the infection and improve patients’ respiratory and cardiovascular states. Funding will start in a few days, with a financial goal of 26.000€.

Another project aims to develop an innovative therapeutic strategy by hindering interactions between hepatitis B, C and E viruses and apolipoprotein E. This ApoE is indeed exploited by these three viruses to stimulate their replication: their survival greatly depends on their interaction with this apolipoprotein. The goal of this project is to test the capacity of certain peptides (isolated from different regions of ApoE) to inhibit the viral replication in their host cells. Funding will start in a few days, with a financial goal of 17.000€.

In total, Thellie represents more than 1.500 donors and 640.000€ collected for Research.

Find out more

Find out more about Thellie and their projects by visiting their website here . You can also read our blog article on the collaboration between Labtoo and Thellie by following this link .