DUBLIN — Professor Niamh Nowlan of University College Dublin received a European Research Council Proof of Concept Grant on June 30, 2026. The grant will support research into targeted treatments for pediatric growth disorders through her GROW-REG project.

The European Research Council announced funding for the first round of 2026 Proof of Concept Grants on the same day. This round totals €27.3 million, distributed among 182 researchers, with each receiving a grant of €150,000. These grants aim to advance ERC-funded research ideas from basic discovery to potential innovations by allowing researchers to explore the commercial or societal potential of their findings.

"With Proof of Concept funding, ERC researchers can test how their discoveries could become new treatments, technologies, services or solutions that benefit people across Europe," said Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation.

"By now, nearly 2500 such grants have helped our grantees explore the innovation potential of discoveries from their ERC-funded research," said Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council.

The GROW-REG project, which stands for "Identifying physeal cell surface markers for pediatric growth modulation," will be led by Nowlan. She is a Full Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a fellow of the UCD Conway Institute. The project aims to identify specific cell surface markers within the physis, also known as the growth plate.

The physis is cartilage that drives bone growth in children and disappears once a child reaches full growth. Growth disorders in children can result from genetic factors, infection, or injury, potentially causing unequal limb length, crooked bones, or abnormal stature. Current treatments often involve systemic drugs, which affect all cells in the body, or invasive surgeries.

The GROW-REG project seeks to enable future drug treatments that could modulate the growth of specific bones without relying on systemic drugs or surgical interventions. "By creating the foundation for a targeted delivery platform capable of modulating growth plate activity with high anatomical precision, we hope to ultimately enable new treatments for a broad range of pediatric growth disorders, reduce reliance on invasive surgery, and improve the safety and specificity of existing biologic therapies," Nowlan said. "Advancing basic research closer to patients (especially babies and children), is hugely rewarding and we are excited to get started."

This new project builds upon discoveries from the ERC-funded ReZone project, which Nowlan also led. The ReZone project revealed major transcriptomic differences between articular and physeal cartilage. The Proof of Concept grants are part of the EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Ms Jemma Falkov and Ms Giulia Giuffredi are members of Nowlan's research group, with Prof Pieter Brama as a collaborator. Dr Mark d'Alton is associated with the UCD Biomedical Facility, and Dr Margherita Castronovo is with the UCD Research Office. Róisín Scallan works with NovaUCD. Prof Connor Green and Dr Ciara McDonnell are clinical collaborators on the project.