King's College London today announced the launch of VISI-ON-BRAIN (Cutting-edge Human In Vitro and In Silico Biomedical Tools on Brain Disorders), a Horizon Europe project, funded with over €4.5 million under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Doctoral Networks (MSCA-DN).
Over four years (2026-2029), the consortium will train 15 doctoral researchers to develop and apply next-generation human in vitro (lab based) and in silico (computer based) approaches for complex brain disorders, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease.
International collaboration
The programme brings together 15 academic, clinical, and industrial partners across eight European countries, enabling doctoral researchers to combine wet-lab innovation with advanced modeling, analytics, and translational validation. Brain disorders are a major global health challenge and a substantial societal and economic burden. VISI-ON-BRAIN will accelerate human-relevant, decision-grade tools that enable earlier, more reliable go/no-go decisions, de-risk translation, and improve the efficiency of therapeutic discovery and development.
Thinking to the future
Beyond the science, VISI-ON-BRAIN is an investment in workforce and competitiveness, training doctoral researchers who can move easily between academia, clinical research, and industry, helping scale New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) from promising methods to validated, deployable practice aligned with evolving regulatory expectations.
The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London (King's IoPPN) is a leader in this field supported by the NIHR Maudsley BRC which has themes in Neuroimaging and in Child Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Disorders.
"I am delighted to join this Horizon Europe doctoral network representing King's College London. This initiative will train a new generation of scientists in cutting edge experimental and computational technologies to model human mechanisms underlying brain conditions, while also helping attract new talent to King's.This network also offers a valuable platform to build partnerships with leading international groups developing New Approach Methodologies for a broad spectrum of brain disorders, from neurodegenerative diseases to psychiatric conditions. Importantly, it will enable us to adapt emerging technologies to our research on child mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions, helping accelerate the translation of foundational scientific insights into meaningful real world impact."
Dr Dafnis Batallé, Senior Lecturer in Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, King's IoPPN and member of the Child Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Disorders theme at the NIHR Maudsley BRC
Political and scientific context
The project arrives as biomedical research and development and policy shift decisively toward innovation without animal use and toward human-relevant, mechanistically anchored evidence, driven by concerns about translation, cost, and late-stage clinical attrition. In Europe, this includes a Commission Roadmap to phase out animal testing in chemical safety assessments and Parliament calls to accelerate the transition with clearer objectives and timelines. In the United States, the FDA has outlined a stepwise plan to reduce animal testing in preclinical safety studies and expand New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), including computational and advanced in vitro systems.
Neuroscience makes this transition mission-critical: neurodegenerative therapeutic agents development has seen exceptionally high failure rates, underscoring the need for models that better reflect human biology and disease trajectories. The EU's broader competitiveness push-via the Commission's Strategy for European Life Sciences ("Choose Europe for life sciences") and the European Biotech Act-reinforces this direction by strengthening translation from lab to market, boosting innovation uptake, and accelerating pathways from research to real-world impact.
VISI-ON-BRAIN is designed to close the translational gap by building an integrated pipeline of predictive, reproducible, clinically anchored experimental and computational tools, while training researchers who can operate at the interface of biology, data, engineering and regulatory relevance.
A pan-European, intersectoral training and research platform
The project is coordinated by the University of Barcelona through Creatio - Production and Validation Center of Advanced Therapies (Spain). The beneficiary consortium includes: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark), Prinses Máxima Centrum voor Kinderoncologie (Netherlands), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany), Lunds Universitet (Sweden), Cardiff University and King's College London (United Kingdom), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy), Starlab Barcelona SL and FRESCI (Spain). Associated partners are: Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy), Utrecht University (Netherlands), VERIGRAFT AB (Sweden), Ospedale San Raffaele SRL (Italy), and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (Belgium).
