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Description
The present project proposal addresses a common issue at Romanian national level, represented by the need to increase the research knowledge of the PhD sector through international collaboration with more advanced Universities in terms of their educational offer – UI and UO.
Flow cytometry has wide applications in human as well as veterinary medicine and represents a powerful research tool as well as a very reliable method of diagnosis and assessment of therapy monitoring in immunology and hematology.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to sustain educational modules at the 3rd level of study, focused on state-of-the-art training in research and elaboration of international Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) under a modern curriculum, available for all PhD students to incorporate in their studies. Such objectives can only be achieved through collaboration with foreign laboratories, that already function according to well-established SOP’s and have a great degree of expertise and confidence. The Icelandic as well as Norwegian partners included in the present proposal (UI and UO) fulfil the above-mentioned criteria as they have specialists with an internationally recognized experience.
The main benefits would be the opportunity to standardize and harmonize the flow cytometry workflow in the Romanian laboratories with the Icelandic and Norwegian ones and to create a network of specialists that could collaborate and share their knowledge and experience beyond the time frame of the current project.
Therefore, the present project is a small size cooperation project meant to establish a long term collaboration for good practices exchange within the medical and research education sector at the 3rd level of study with direct impact upon the PhD curricula innovation. It also aims to increase the level of knowledge among PhD students and integrate the international workforce for all four partners.
Summary of project results
Flow cytometry is a technique that is widely applied in biomedical research worldwide, but very little employed by Romanian researchers due to lack of adequate knowledge and experience, as well as well-established standard operation procedures (SOPs). Both Romanian partners of this project - "I. Hatieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMPh) and the University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine (UASVM) from Cluj-Napoca - posses well equipped laboratories, that include modern flow cytometers, but there was a great need for experienced specialists as well as young PhD students to deepen their knowledge in the field of flow cytometry. Therefore, they cooperated with the Icelandic and Norwegian partners - the University of Iceland (UI) and the University of Oslo (UO) - that already function according to well-established SOP’s and have a great degree of expertise and confidence in the field.
The activities that were implemented were: 2 short-term joint staff training events at UI and UO respectively for modernization of curricula (16 staff members in total – 8 from UMPh and 8 from UASVM); 1 common modern curricula for medical research developed by the trained staff; 40 short term mobility of UMPh and UASVM students and PhD students for transnational learning of 5 days at UI and UO; 1 educational research e-platform (available also after project implementation at https://flow-protocols.webnode.ro/); 1 videoconference based common research consulting council at UMPh and UASVM; 1 short-term joint staff training event at UMPh (1 staff member from UI); 4 scientific articles in internationally recognized scientific journals realized in common between the four partners; 1 multiplier event with 60 national and international participants from the health sector, for project promotion and data dissemination.
The results of these activities refer to an adequate training of UMPh and UASVM staff and PhD students, while the project opened a long-lasting collaboration between the four partners and most importantly allowed the development of a modern curricula and an online e-platform that will lead to adequate future training of doctoral students in the field of flow cytometry. The project offered the opportunity to standardize and harmonize the flow cytometry workflow in the Romanian laboratories with the Icelandic and Norwegian ones and to create a network of specialists that will collaborate and share their knowledge and experience beyond the time frame of the current project.
Summary of bilateral results
Our project had two donor partners, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland (UI) and University of Oslo, Norway (UO) whose specialists with an internationally recognized experience in flow cytometry represented key members, that allowed the achievement of proposed objectives. The professors from UI as well as from UO organized the joint staff training event at UI and UO respectively, and had a decisive contribution to the development of the common modern curricula for medical research at the 3rd level of study, due to their extensive experience and expertise in flow cytometry protocols. They also organized the training seminars for the Romanian students and PhD students and kindly provided all the protocols they routinely use for flow cytometry analysis, that represented the basis for setting up all protocols and SOPs that can currently be found on the project’s e-platform (https://flow-protocols.webnode.ro/). The Norwegian partner also participated in a short-term joint staff training event at UMPh, where he had the opportunity to share his knowledge with specialists and PhD students from the host university. The valuable input of donor partners made a decisive contribution to the elaboration of the 4 joint scientific articles that were published in internationally recognized journals by the members of the research team. They are also part of the videoconference based common research consulting council, which can provide assistance to researchers from all four universities regarding the use of flow cytometry in biomedical research. The contribution of the donor partners was significant as they were open and willing to share their infrastructure and know-how with all Romanian participants. The collaboration between the four universities will not end here, as they will further cooperate to educate and train PhD students, apply for joint research projects and collaborate in research subjects.