LifeCycle project aimed at studying early-life stressors kicks off

The EU Horizon 2020 funded LifeCycle Project was launched on April 3 ^rd 2017 at Erasmus MC -University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This project will bring together pregnancy and child cohort study researchers in a new, open and sustainable network, the EU CHILD Cohort Network. This network can be used to identify novel markers of early-life stressors which may affect health trajectories throughout the lifecycle.

This € 10.4 M project will be carried out by a multinational and multidisciplinary consortium consisting of 18 partners from 10 different European countries and Australia. “Early life is a window of opportunity”, Project Coordinator Professor Vincent Jaddoe explains: “Adverse exposures just before and during pregnancy and during early childhood can have a profound effect on health and disease during childhood, adolescence and adulthood”.

This ambitious project combines data on over 250,000 children and their parents from Europe and Australia to provide robust scientific evidence on this important topic. Research findings will be translated into new prevention and intervention policies focused on the earliest phase of life, giving next generations the best possible start!

ISGlobal will be coordinating two of the work packages of LifeCycle, under the leadership of Martine Vrijheid and Jordi Sunyer, respectively, who will be directing work on early life environmental stressors and on mental health trajectories in children.

“This project is a unique opportunity to understand what affects our children’s development by focusing on many different levels of exposure, from the urban environment, to social circumstances and individual life styles”, Martine Vrijheid states.

“ISGlobal will provide its expertise in the joint analysis of multiple environmental exposures as well as its leadership in the assessment of neurodevelopment”, Jordi Sunyer reflects.

Further Information

www.lifecycle-project.eu