PRAETORIAN · EuroPean Training NetwoRks to TArget DAMPs and NETs: novel apprOaches in pRecision SepsIs pAtieNt care

Sepsis remains one of the major challenges for societies worldwide, causing an estimated 7-9 million deaths every year. It is the leading cause of death at intensive care units in the EU. This high mortality persists because at present methods for timely diagnosis are lacking and no effective therapy is available. Therefore, there is a clear and urgent medical need to provide novel diagnostics and therapeutics for use in sepsis. The PRAETORIAN Doctoral Network has created a doctorate programme to deliver innovative training on preclinical and clinical science, business- and entrepreneurial aspects, intellectual properties and more, covering multiple aspects of the drug discovery and development process. This programme is unique as it will deliver a new generation of young scientists, each Doctoral Candidates (DCs), who will collaboratively work to develop novel approaches in precision sepsis patient care providing new diagnostics and therapeutics to answer to an urgent unmet clinical need. Recent insights have indicated a pivotal role for neutrophil activation and so-called damage associated patterns in the initiation and propagation of sepsis. However a comprehensive view on how these processes cause the onset of sepsis remains elusive and there is an urgent need to translate experimental findings into adequate diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. PRAETORIAN was designed to address this urgent need by bringing together specialists from academia and industry to shape a new generation of entrepreneurial scientists who have skills, expertise and knowhow to further our understanding of sepsis pathophysiology into tangible and effective solutions for novel diagnosis and therapy.