European research organisations, pharmaceutical companies, SME’s and patient organisations have joined forces as partners to develop innovative personalised treatment options for people affected by psoriatic arthritis. SIB is delivering core data expertise to the consortium, called HIPPOCRATES, and acts as its data coordination centre.
Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disease that affects joints and other components of the musculoskeletal system, together with skin involvement, in an estimated 5-10 million individuals in Europe. By looking into the disease mechanisms, the 26 European partners collaborating in the new research project HIPPOCRATES aim at improving diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients living with this condition.
Through gaining a better understanding of the complex interplay between clinical and environmental factors, genotype and molecular pathways, the team aims to enable earlier diagnosis and a more accurate prediction of disease progression. “In such a multifactorial disease as psoriatic arthritis, achieving seamless data integration among cohorts and datasets shared by the contributing partners is key to be able to detect meaningful disease-associated patterns,” explains Mark Ibberson, Director of SIB’s Vital-IT Computational biology group. “We are delighted to be part of this collaborative endeavour to improve patient outcomes, and to be building on our expertise as Data Coordination Centre in large public-private projects.”
“As co-leads of the Data analysis and integration work package, we will be supporting all other actors in the project from data harmonization and vocabulary standardization to implementing FAIR principles, and will contribute to the data analysis efforts,” says Vassilios Ioannidis, co-leading SIB’s work in the project.
The project will run for a period of five years with a total budget of EUR 21 million provided by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI 2), a Joint Undertaking of the European Union and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
