Project: Personalized medicine in schizophrenia: predicting relapse, treatment response and the potential benefit of add-on anti-inflammatory agents
| Acronym | PerMedSchiz (Reference Number: ERAPERMED2019-065) |
| Duration | 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2023 |
| Project Topic | Schizophrenia is a disabling mental illness that affects millions of Europeans. While antipsychotics alleviate symptoms in 1/3 of patients, majority of patients are refractory to treatment. Although guidelines are available, there is an urgent need to identify objective predictors of treatment outcome to guide personalized treatment. We have made the hypotheses that i) a subset of patients exhibiting a pro-inflammatory profile can benefit from add-on anti-inflammatory drugs and (ii) that blood levels of inflammatory immune molecules can predict treatment outcome (failure or response) in schizophrenia patients. We will take advantage of clinical data and serum samples collected from three randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials which have been designed to evaluate the efficacy of anti-inflammatory agents as adjunct drugs in schizophrenia patients. We will also build on data and samples collected from outpatients followed yearly in the French Schizophrenia Expert Centres. In our first and second work packages (WP), we will use a robust immunoassay to quantitate serum levels of pertinent inflammation-related molecules. Using advanced supervised machine learning methods, we will generate predictive blood-based classifiers to identify patients at risk of non-responding to conventional antipsychotic monotherapy, patients at risk of relapse following treatment, and patients at risk of developing antipsychotic-induced adverse effects (predictive pharmacovigilance). In the remaining WPs, we will conduct a randomized, double-blind phase III intervention study (WP3) to validate our hypotheses and to model its cost-effectiveness when combined with a blood-based algorithm for selecting patients (WP4). |
| Network | ERA PerMed |
| Call | 2nd Joint Transnational Call for Proposals (2019) |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CNRS | Coordinator | France |
| 2 | Copenhagen University Hospital | Partner | Denmark |
| 3 | Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale | Partner | France |
| 4 | UMC Groningen | Partner | Netherlands |
| 5 | Medical University of Vienna | Partner | Austria |
| 6 | University Munich | Partner | Germany |