iPROLEPSIS networking activities

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of mortality in Europe (1.9 million of annual deaths). CVD are significant public health challenge, accounting for €200 billion in economic burden annually in Europe. Lipid-mediated chronic inflammation and particularly the failure in the resolution of the inflammation, is a particular critical risk factor for the transition from health to CVD. CARE-IN-HEALTH addresses this by aiming to identify the pathways involved in the resolution of the lipid-mediated inflammation to prevent and reverse inflammation and therefore CVD. The interdisciplinary consortium will collect and integrate epidemiological, multi-omics, and immune data to create the CARE-IN-HEALTH Atlas, which will be openly accessible to the scientific community. Such a knowledge base will allow to systematically identify and validate individual’s critical immune pathways. A CARE-IN-HEALTH MCDSS (multi-criteria decision support system) will guide healthcare professionals to design personalised CVD prevention strategies. The CARE-IN-HEALTH BIOSENSOR will monitor inflammation resolution for citizens. CARE-IN-HEALTH will demonstrate proof-of-concept for an appropriate lipid intake as dietary intervention and specifically, for the use of vegetal omega-3 fatty acid sources as substrates for immunomodulatory lipid mediators and resolution of inflammation. All this is based on the results of a proof-of-concept clinical trial.

GLYCANTRIGGER - Glycans as master triggers of health to intestinal inflammation transition. The GlycanTrigger project proposes a thorough and innovative approach to understand better the health-to-chronic inflammation transition occurring in patients with Crohn’s Disease that will be translated into improved disease prediction and prevention. The project will address how changes in glycosylation of the gut mucosa act as a primary event that dysregulates not only local mechanisms but also systemic mechanisms, involving the novel concept of glycan mimicry as an early trigger of the health-to-inflammation transition. The long-term goal of this project is to unlock a new checkpoint that regulates the transition to chronic inflammation, aiming to figure out how to turn off this process by developing novel preventive intervention strategies.

NAFL (non-alcoholic fatty liver) is the most widespread subtype of NAFLD, a highly prevalent inflammation-related disease, characterized by steatosis, relatively benign and reversible condition, which can progress to the more serious progressive stage of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), in which steatosis is accompained by lipotoxicity, mitochondrial dysfunction and a high state of inflammation and fibrosis.

The EU-funded research project IMMEDIATE strives to identify individual biomarkers of risk and resilience against chronic inflammation by investigating the diet-microbiome-metabolite-immune axis. This complex interaction refers to how an individual's diet, gut microbiota, metabolites, and immune system can influence their health. IMMEDIATE will use cutting-edge technologies and clinical and metadata from large observational cohort studies to identify pre-disease stages and further our understanding of the mechanisms and molecular pathways underpinning non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept study on healthcare professionals will be conducted to test the effectiveness of a probiotic intervention and ultimately develop mobile apps designed to offer personalized lifestyle recommendations and empower citizens to manage their own health proactively.

INITIALISE (Inflammation in human early life: targeting impacts on life-course health) is an EU funded project that aims to elucidate how exposures and genome impact gut microbiome, host immune system and metabolism, and how the interplay of these factors impact life-course health.  INITIALISE aims to define the role of the maturation of the immune system as a mediator between exposures and life-course health.

Inflammatory-based interceptive medicine in type 2 diabetes Individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) do not use insulin efficiently and, therefore, their glucose levels rise. T2D is a heterogeneous disease, which is an obstacle to the delivery of an optimal tailored treatment. Consequently, patients’ individual trajectories of progressive hyperglycaemia and risk of chronic complications such as stroke, heart attacks, nephropathy and retinopathy are so far difficult to predict. Chronic systemic inflammation has been suggested to be a major contributor to the onset and progression of T2D complications. The EU-funded INTERCEPT-T2D project will bring a new and clinically relevant dimension in T2D care considering at diagnosis inflammatory parameters that are of importance for the transition to T2D-related complications. Moreover, the project will help deliver optimal treatments tailored to patient needs and conduct a clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of anti-inflammatory strategies.

The miGut-Health project is an EU-funded initiative that is developing novel strategies to predict and prevent inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). miGut-Health aims to create personalised patient engagement strategies for predicting and monitoring preclinical IBD by focusing on the transitory phase from health to disease. The overarching goal is to provide strategies for early disease prediction, prevention and gut health improvement for people affected by IBD, high-risk individuals and citizens.

Most cases of gastric cancer (GC) are detected at a late stage, when patients have a median life expectancy of about a year. Diagnosing people at risk of developing GC at the pre-symptomatic stage, typically chronic gastric inflammation, could significantly improve the outlook. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help clinicians make sense of their own data by automating much of the treatment and analysis, which require manual work and years of experience. But it can do more: it can bring together available data from various sources into a vast data lake and cross-correlate the data to derive a ‘risk score’ for gastric cancer and shed light on the mechanisms of its evolution. Aida aims to do just that. It helps researchers understand the mechanisms that trigger gastric oncogenesis, helps clinicians diagnose precancerous inflammation at the earliest possible stage, suggests personalised therapeutic strategies for treatment and follow-up, and makes personalised recommendations for monitoring patient health status, thus contributing to gastric cancer prevention. This places Aida squarely on Europe’s agenda of ‘Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society’. Aida unites some of Europe’s leading authorities in the field of gastric inflammation, gastric cancer, leading AI and machine learning experts, experts on data governance and privacy, representatives of the public administration and patient advocates. Aida also has strong ties with the industry. After the project, the results will live on in a foundation that acts as a transnational focal point for chronic gastric inflammation — and GC in general. We hope that the solid, inclusive design principles of Aida, its societal relevance and its durability will spawn a vigorous ecosystem around chronic gastric inflammation, its understanding and its treatment. And we hope that it will inspire other data collaboratives in health — for other chronic inflammations, other forms of cancer or other ailments altogether.

Information coming soon.

Information coming soon.

Information coming soon.

Information coming soon.