COMMUTE has made strong progress toward its technical and scientific objectives. Overall management was coordinated effectively, aligning activities with objectives and milestones. The consortium completed contractual obligations, including funder reporting and finalizing the Consortium and Grant Agreement.
A comprehensive Data Management Plan was developed to outline data handling procedures adhering to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable principles, strengthening data governance. A Dissemination and Communication Plan was submitted to engage stakeholders, including patient organizations and research institutions.
Data handling and knowledge graphs were described. The team examined data models and ontologies to standardize clinical dataset features, leading to a comorbidity-centric knowledge graph with 2,800 curated relations and a natural language processing-enhanced hypothesis graph with 4,700 edges. An enrichment server was created to enable algorithmic use of these knowledge graphs for analyses such as gene set enrichment.
To create biomarker-based artificial intelligence and machine learning models to identify patients at risk of neurodegenerative diseases, the team accessed multiple databases and curated relevant variables. The project also began uncovering molecular mechanisms linking coronavirus disease and neurodegenerative diseases, identifying public databases for further investigation.
Knowledge-based hypotheses for comorbidity mechanisms were generated through literature review, yielding testable hypotheses and experimental models. Collaboration with artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives identified critical molecular drivers of coronavirus disease and neurodegenerative disease comorbidities through advanced network analysis.
Legal and ethical considerations were addressed through workshops with consortium members and stakeholders, providing recommendations for implementation. Data governance was strengthened through a Data Protection Impact Assessment, and a centralized helpdesk was set up for legal queries.
In the first 18 months, COMMUTE advanced understanding of the interplay between coronavirus disease and neurodegenerative diseases while developing robust data management frameworks and ensuring ethical compliance.
