Project: Personalizing health care in Multiple Sclerosis using systems medicine tools
| Acronym | Sys4MS (Reference Number: JTC1_43) |
| Duration | 01/05/2016 - 31/10/2019 |
| Project Topic | Development of personalized health care for complex diseases like Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is hindered by a poor understanding of the biological processes underlying the disease and their interactions, as well as by the heterogeneity between patients. These shortcomings also represent a significant limitation in terms of monitoring or predicting the disease course, as well as in the prescription of the mostefficacious or safer therapies. By integrating clinical information with omics data and mathematical models of MS, we aim to develop algorithms that can be used in clinical practice to define the prognosis of the disease and that will help in selecting the best therapeutic approach based on the patient’s phenotype. We shall focus on 5 different levels of biological complexity to capture and integrate the mostrelevant information: 1) genomics to evaluate the individual’s genetic predisposition; 2) phosphoproteomics to capture the activity of signalling pathways involved in the immune response; 3) cytomics to capture the dynamics of the autoimmune response; 4) Imaging to quantify the damage of the central nervous system; 5) clinical phenotype (clinical scales, comorbidities, drug usage, quality of life, healtheconomics) to define the clinical outcomes to be reached. Such an approach will benefit from previous work carried out by members of the consortium in the application of systems medicine to MS, including the development of network models of signalling pathways, mathematical models of the dynamics of immune cells, and the harmonization of multilevel and complex databases to develop clinicaldecision support systems. By testing such tools in small clinical studies, we shall improve the usefulness of systems medicine tools in clinical practice. |
| Network | ERACoSysMed |
| Call | 1st Call: European Research Projects to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of systems medicine |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Consorci Institut D'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer | Coordinator | Spain |
| 2 | Universitätsklinikum Aachen | Partner | Germany |
| 3 | Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria San Martino– IST | Partner | Italy |
| 4 | University of Oslo | Partner | Norway |
| 5 | Charity University Medicine Berlin | Partner | Germany |