TTD

Partners Maastricht University (CARIM, lead partner), University Hasselt (BIOMED), VITO, TSG InnoteQ, DSP Valley and Bonné+Jan focus on developing better options for identification of cardiovascular diseases within the Interreg Flanders-The Netherlands project Trans Tech Diagnostics (TTD).

Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death in the European Union and come with major financial burden for the European Community, being estimated at € 196 billion annually. Of these costs € 106 billion is spent on health care, including diagnosis and treatment of patients. The rapid aging and decline of the number of young adults in our border region Flanders – (south) Netherlands creates the expectation that cardiovascular disease will exert a fast increasing negative impact on our society.

A considerable number of people with cardiovascular disease are without serious symptoms during the development of the disease and, as a consequence, lack medical supervision and treatment. They do have an increased risk at cardiovascular events such as a heart attack. To minimize this risk, TTD aims at developing better options to define this risk (diagnostics). In addition, the TTD-research is expected to enable fine-tuning of therapies and as such, a decrease in complications and side effects. With this, TTD answers to the demands of health professionals and of the market.

New technologies (bioassays) at the level of inflammation, testing of (nano)molecular biomarkers and new experimental infrastructure will be used within TTD to determine (personalized) cardiovascular risk. The open innovation platform of TTD also offers options for collaborations with other public and private partners focusing on cardiovascular research.