Osteoporosis, the most common type of bone disorder, with a high fracture incidence, affects more than 200 million people worldwide. Effective treatment that successfully restores bone integrity without concomitantly inflicting undesirable side-effects is limited, creating the need for identifying improved therapy using simple, fast, and robust assays to reduce the osteoporosis treatment gap.
The ZeEBRA project, led by Dr Melissa Marie Formosa from the Department of Applied Biomedical Science at the Faculty of Health Sciences and Centre for Molecular Medicine & Biobanking, will use zebrafish as an improved and robust model for high-throughput screening of small molecules to identify new drug targets for treating bone disorders. Improved treatment options will help achieve an active ageing population, promote healthy living, and boost economic growth.
The 3-year ZeEBRA project is a R&I FUSION Technology Development Programme (TDP) funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST). The project will be a collaborative effort between researchers from the University of Malta (Lead Partner) including Ms Margherita Muscat and Dr Sherif Suleiman, AquaBioTech Limited and the Department of Organismal Animal Physiology at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Project Collaborator). A Memorandum of Understanding has been set up between the University of Malta and Radboud University.
For further information about the ZeEBRA project, kindly contact Dr Formosa. Project ZeEBRA (R&I-2019-018-T) financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology, through the FUSION: R&I Technology Development Programme.