Mission Lucidity - decoding brain disease

About

We choose a future without neurodegenerative disease

As a world-class biomedical, clinical and nanotechnology R&D hub, we are on a mission to decode dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases, with the aim of curing or preventing them.

Our value innovation approach is organized across a 10-year initiative program with clear horizons and a supporting technology roadmap.

Unique constellation of partners

By leveraging the biomedical, clinical and technological expertise of our founding partners, we accelerate medical discovery towards a future without neurodegeneration. Game-changing, scalable technology platforms and tools give us a unique opportunity to deliver scientific and medical breakthroughs.

Three-sided innovation platform

We take a multi-angle approach to tackle neurodegenerative disease: zooming in on the cellular and intracellular levels via nanoscale technologies, and studying symptoms and disease processes in humans. We bring those two levels together by looking at the modulation of brain activity and processes.

Decoding dementia together

imec

imec is the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, energy and education.

As a trusted partner for companies, start-ups and universities, we bring together close to 3,500 brilliant minds from over 70 nationalities. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, China, and offices in India and Japan.

KU Leuven

KU Leuven is one of Europe’s oldest universities and the co-founder of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). KU Leuven ranks as the 7th most innovative university in the world, and the first that is not based in the US (Reuters 2019). KU Leuven Research & Development, the university’s technology transfer office, manages over 3,000 university-to-industry agreements every year. KU Leuven has a long tradition of developing innovative and effective healthcare solutions, such as the world’s leading anti-HIV drug (tenofovir) and medication for the treatment of heart attacks and strokes (tPA).

uzleuven

UZ Leuven is the University Hospital of KU Leuven and the largest in Belgium. With over 9,000 employees and 1,995 beds, it offers extensive academic hospital care with a dedicated memory clinic and excellent neurology and gerontopsychiatric services. It is also a top-ranked clinical trial center, with the fastest approval rate for clinical trials in Europe.

VIB

Basic research in life sciences is VIB’s raison d’être. VIB is an independent research institute, based on a close partnership with the five universities in Flanders. It is a European Centre of Excellence in life sciences (EU-LIFE) where some 1,500 top international scientists conduct pioneering basic research. As such, they are pushing the boundaries of what we know about molecular mechanisms and how they rule living organisms such as human beings, animals, plants and microorganisms.