Project

The APACHE Project is a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).  ERC Starting grants are designed to support projects of Principal Investigators at an initial career stage with projects of ground-breaking nature which are ambitious and feasible at the same time.

The APACHE Project falls right in the emerging field of Plasma Medicine, which combines plasma physics, life sciences and clinical medicine. Plasma medicine is being studied in therapies including disinfection, tissue healing or cancer which employ physical plasma (the 4th state of matter, an ionized gas) for medical uses.    

Cold atmospheric pressure plasmas (APP) have been reported to selectively kill cancer cells without damaging the surrounding tissues. Studies have been conducted on a variety of cancer types and the APACHE Project is focused on bone cancer, to provide alternatives and/or complementary approaches to conventional treatment options. Treatment options for bone cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, etc. and may involve the use of bone grafting biomaterials to replace the surgically removed bone.