Exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke (SHS) has been classified as a "Group 1” carcinogen (known human carcinogen) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and has been shown to have adverse health effects on adults and children, including heart disease and respiratory disorders. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), the most common “electronic nicotine delivery system”, have irrupted in the past 5 years with sales volumes increasing considerably across the European Union. The TackSHS Project will try to elucidate the comprehensive impact that SHS and e-cigarettes emissions have on the respiratory health of the European population and how health impacts vary according to socio-economic parameters with particular emphasis on specific vulnerable groups (patients suffering from pre-existing chronic lung diseases, heavy smokers, and other disadvantaged groups). By means of an integrated series of work packages, we will investigate the determinants of SHS exposure, assessed at the individual level and in the environment (survey and air quality assessment in 12 countries), the overall burden of disease caused (lung diseases and cardiovascular diseases), including the specific respiratory health changes in patients and healthy people, the economic impact of both mortality and morbidity caused by these exposures, the methods to better characterize these exposures and novel interventions to reduce them. This comprehensive, integrated approach will enable significant step-change beyond the current state-of-the-art in understanding SHS and e- cigarette emission exposure. The participating partners have been at the forefront of cutting edge research in this discipline, with prior collaboration between them in specific projects. The TackSHS Project will put together for the first time all these first-line research teams, and the conjunction of the work packages will result in a step forward to tackle exposure to SHS and e-cigarettes emissions.

TREATMENT is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Innovative Training Network proposal directly addressing the need for high-level training and career paths in risk evaluation of drug induced metabolic dysfunctions, a relevant aspect, so far unexplored by traditional toxicology studies, but urgently needed to challenge current severe limitations of health care interventions in mental disorders. These patients require life-long medications that subsequently trigger metabolic diseases with a strong negative impact on their health and well-being. To achieve this, and improve adherence to treatments, we will evaluate how short-term antipsychotic drug responses impact long-term metabolic control to identify and validate biomarkers with clinically predictive value for targeting drug induced metabolic dysfunctions. This effort will have added commercial value by enabling the design of predictive marker kits for testing adverse secondary metabolic effects of drugs to be used in pharmacological and medical practice. TREATMENT will provide multidisciplinary knowledge, capabilities and tools to implement this ambitious strategy by the training of young scientists in a program that combines pharmacology, metabolism and mental health research with strategies for product and tool design and validation. Our ultimate goal is to empower the intersectorial and trans-national employability of young scientists across academic, public and private sectors to foster the development and implementation of personalized medicine tools that will provide effective treatment regimens for life long health-care interventions and decrease the risk for development of chronic metabolic diseases.