Project: Reclassification using OmiCs integration in KidnEy Transplantation (ROCKET)

Acronym	ROCKET (Reference Number: JTC2_29)
Duration	01/09/2018 - 31/08/2022
Project Topic	Kidney transplantation is the optimal treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESD) as it improves quality of life, socio-economicrehabilitation and health, compared to dialysis. Less than 1/3 of ESD patients live with a functioning transplant, due to organ shortage andlimited graft survival. The challenge is to prolong graft survival but timely recognition and reliable diagnosis of the multifactorial causes ofgraft damage is difficult. With current standards of care (monitoring of graft function, biopsy upon impairment), disturbances of the graft arediscovered too late and even histology on biopsies leaves many cases unclear. Omics approaches have been explored to define molecularmarkers for distinct graft injuries and to decipher the underlying pathomechanisms but validation and implementation into the clinic islacking.With two large ongoing studies, we will have a repository of >2000 patients at the beginning of 2018, with clinical, histological, andmolecular data from different omics platforms (mRNA, miRNA, proteins, peptides in urine and blood), including longitudinal samples.For this project, we will integrate all data into a database. We will establish and validate molecular marker sets for all relevant diseaseentities of the graft. Using systems biology approaches, prototypical and overlapping immune and non-immune pathways will bereconstructed and modelled from omics data. Reconstructed pathways will be integrated as prior information in a state-of-the-art Bayesianmachine learning framework to re-classify the entities and to classify cases that are less-well defined by histology. Graft function, responseto treatments, remission or progression of disease will be incorporated to obtain dynamic models and prediction.This approach will refine current standards of diagnosis, increase diagnostic accuracy, improve the understanding of the complexity andpathomechanisms of graft damage and finally, will help to build an expert system based on non-invasive markers for prediction and medicaldecision making on a personalized level
Network	ERACoSysMed
Call	2nd Joint Transnational Call for European Research Projects on Systems Medicine

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Hannover Medical School	Coordinator	Germany
2	KU Leuven	Partner	Belgium
3	INSERM U1151	Partner	France
4	Limoges University	Partner	France
5	Technische Universität Dresden	Partner	Germany