The demographic change with an ever-aging population places a heavy burden on health care systems worldwide. Despite all medical advances, age remains the major risk for one of the top two killers, cardiovascular disease (CVD). The aging vasculature is at the center where the finely tuned interplay between diverse cell types becomes disarrayed and thus fosters both, inflammation and thrombosis. For atherosclerosis and the major complications, i.e. myocardial infarction and stroke, inflammation and thrombosis are two pathological processes that have commonly been investigated independently, but now need integration within the concept of vascular thrombo-inflammation.
This novel approach focuses on key interactions between vessel wall and blood, influencing highly prevalent CVD processes, to ultimately reveal new mechanistic pathways that can contribute to more specific diagnostic markers as well as therapeutic targets. In the European Joint Doctorates (EJD) program ‘Thrombo-inflammation in cardiovascular disease’ (TICARDIO), four beneficiaries have formed a strategic alliance, based on complementary expertise and previous fruitful and strong cooperation, to unravel multifaceted mechanisms of thrombo-inflammation. TICARDIO will train the next generation of biomedical researchers in excellent laboratories of major multidisciplinary research hubs at the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis (CTH) of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Medical Center Mainz (DE), referred to as CTH, the School for Cardiovascular Diseases (CARIM) of Maastricht University (NL), referred to as CARIM, the Center for Cardiovascular and Nutition Research (C2VN) at Aix-Marseille Université in Marseille (FR), referred to as C2VN, and the Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften – ISAS - e.V. in Dortmund (DE), referred to as ISAS.
