Summary of ongoing research initiatives, in Europe and the USA, aiming at a better understanding of the complexity of asthma and COPD
| Study name | Goal | Type of patients included | Reported strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| U-BIOPRED Unbiased Biomarkers for the Prediction of Respiratory Disease Outcomes http://www.ubiopred.eu | To better understand the different types of severe asthma with the hope that this understanding will consider individual characteristics and make it easier to develop new medicines | 500 adult patients with severe asthma and several control groups, including up to 75 patients with non-severe asthma, 100 patients with COPD and 50 non-smoking healthy people | Integration of high-dimensional data from invasive (bronchial biopsies), non-invasive (blood, sputum, urine and exhaled air) and patient-reported outcomes will enable identification of distinct phenotypic handprints with the aim of predicting therapeutic (including innovative and new molecules) efficacy in view of personalised management |
| EvA Emphysema versus Airway study http://www.eva-copd.eu | To explore the concept that emphysema and airway disease are governed by different pathophysiological processes, are driven by different genes and have differential gene expression in the lung | 500 patients with COPD (ex-smokers) and 300 healthy volunteers (age >45, never smokers or ex-smokers) | Gene expression in the two types of lung tissue, that is, bronchial epithelial cells (bronchoscopic brush) and alveolar macrophages (broncho-alveolar lavage), is compared with CT-defined emphysema and airway disease phenotypes |
| MeDALL Mechanisms of the Development of Allergy http://www.medall-fp7.eu | To generate novel knowledge on the mechanisms of initiation of allergy from early childhood to young adulthood to propose early diagnosis, prevention and targets for therapy | Large network of existing birth cohorts | Methods and tools used in systems biology will be applied to facilitate an effective knowledge management strategy and to integrate the findings of the different mechanistic studies built up on the samples provided by the birth cohorts. The information from the mechanistic studies will be used to validate the classical and novel phenotypes and to assess interactions with relevant environmental factors |
| Synergy-COPD project http://www.synergy-copd.eu | To study the underlying mechanisms of COPD phenotypes associated with poor prognosis, by simulating different functions of the human body using computer models at different levels (sub-cellular, tissue, organ and organ system) The project seeks to produce a more complete computer model of the mechanisms of COPD | Existing databases of clinical trials and research projects of the pharmaceutical industry regarding patients with COPD | The project integrates all this information with physiological and molecular biology data that have been processed for more than 30 years to obtain a unified model, which is the one that will be used to simulate the evolution of the disease in a person. First, contributing to foster convergence between basic and clinical sciences. Second, promoting the link between systems medicine and integrated care, aiming at personalised health for patients with chronic diseases |
| AirPROM Airway Disease Predicting Outcomes through Patient Specific Computational Modelling http://www.airprom.eu | To develop a patient-specific multiscale predictive computational airway model that can predict the development of asthma or COPD in an individual patient | Patients with asthma, COPD and a small number of healthy controls from three large European cohorts EvA, U-BIOPRED and the BTS severe asthma cohort | A broad multi-discipline approach (including expertise in physiology, radiology, image analysis, bioengineering, data harmonisation, security and ethics, computational modelling and systems biology) will enable development of an integrated multiscale airways model |
| ESCAPE European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects http://www.escapeproject.eu | Investigate long-term effects of air pollution on perinatal health outcomes, development of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and cause-specific mortality | European cohort studies from the general population | Efficiently using health data already available from European cohort studies. To these studies, air pollution exposure assessment will be applied at the individual home address level of participants in each of these studies |
| CHANCES Consortium on Health and Ageing: Network of Cohorts in Europe and the USA http://www.chancesfp7.eu | To combine and integrate ongoing cohort studies to produce an integrated approach to the study of health in older people. To generate a unique resource for additional studies on health and multi-morbidity in older people | Combining 15 European cohorts of older people | Evaluating health issues related to ageing and ageing-related conditions. Health-related determinants comprising socio-economic factors, environmental factors, occupational exposures, lifestyle and nutritional factors. Health-related conditions comprise mainly cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, bone disease and cognitive disorders but also respiratory and other diseases |
| COPDgene study http://www.copdgene.org | To investigate the underlying genetic factors of COPD, to better classify COPD and understand how the disease may differ from person to person | 10 000 smokers with and without COPD across all GOLD stages | A GWAS is performed to identify genetic risk factors related to COPD. Furthermore, it is planned to characterise the disease process using high-resolution CT scans |
| SPIROMICS Subpopulations and intermediate outcome measures in COPD study http://www.cscc.unc.edu/spir/ | To identify COPD subpopulations and intermediate outcome measures for future use in clinical studies. Secondary aims are to clarify the natural history of COPD, to develop bioinformatic resources and to create a database for further research | 3200 patients with COPD, 40–80 years of age, included at six clinical centres in the USA | A prospective collection and analysis of phenotypic, biomarker, genetic, genomic, and clinical data, including high-resolution CT scans and bronchoscopic samples (in a subset of patients) |
| MESA Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis http://www.mesa-nhlbi.org | To investigate the prevalence and progression of subclinical cardiovascular disease. The extensive phenotyping of this ‘cardiovascular’ study have already provided insight in airways disease | Population-based sample of 6814 asymptomatic men and women aged 45–84 years | Extensive and repetitive cardiovascular functional and structural imaging, standard coronary risk factors, socio-demographic factors, lifestyle factors, and psychosocial factors. Blood samples of DNA are being extracted and lymphocytes immortalised for study of candidate genes, and possibly, genome-wide scanning |
BTS, British Thoracic Society; COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; GOLD, Global Initiative for Chronic Lung Diseases; GWAS, genome-wide association study.