Project Overview | Nexus EU Project

Nexus: an EU-funded project

NEXUS is a project funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2021 framework, under the EIC Transition to Open program. A multidisciplinary team will develop an easily customizable, integrated and automated platform that enables EVs separation, purification and multivariate characterization from complex biofluids, out of concepts and piloting results from former FET project INDEX.

NEXUS raises the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and brings to the next stage the integration of a selective isolation and in situ enrichment of small EVs from plasma, with the in-line multiparameter analysis regarding vesicle size, number and immunopnenotype.

Main future applications

Biomarker Research and Translation

Biomarkers are a cornerstone of Medical Care. They are applicable to the increasing clinical usage in diagnostics, treatment efficacy and disease monitoring, aswell as spur the development of novel therapeutics by providing accepted surrogates that reduce the cost of screening drugs. By offering the analytical and operational features necessary for cost-efficient, robust detection of rare disease-associated surface EV biomarkers, NEXUS builds the interface between biomarker discovery and clinical validation.

Precision Diagnostic and Liquid Biopsy (LB)

The clinical validity of LB appears evident from a multitude of clinical reports while its clinical utility is still to be fully established and requires performing multicentre clinical studies. NEXUS packages in all the enabling steps to prompt EV proteomic analysis, introduce multi-parameter and informative diagnostics, and possibly integrate and complement the state of art EV nucleic acid-based tests.

Analytical tools for therapeutic and product development “Theralytics”

The same high-resolution and sensitivity technologies for the realization of diagnostic and prognostic promise of EV biomarkers are key enablers of the characterization of therapeutic and custom care EV formulations and the bioprocess development. This offers huge requalification opportunity pursued today by EV pre-analytics and analytics solution providers versus QC and regulatory applications in therapies, vaccines, cosmetics or nutraceuticals.

WP	TASK
WP1	Project and Innovation Management
WP2	Microfluidic Isolation
WP3	Chemistry and Biochemistry for Reversible Capture
WP4	Design, Development and Integration of Modular Automated Instrument
WP5	Technical Validation
WP6	Reference EVs and Clinical Validation
WP7	Economic evaluation, exploitation and replication

TASK

WP1

Project and Innovation Management

WP2

Microfluidic Isolation

WP3

Chemistry and Biochemistry for Reversible Capture

WP4

Design, Development and Integration of Modular Automated Instrument

WP5

Technical Validation

WP6