Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HELICAL (HEalth data LInkage for ClinicAL benefit)
Período documentado: 2019-01-01 hasta 2020-12-31
HELICAL addresses this unmet need by developing a trans-sectoral and interdisciplinary training programme that builds on the expertise and existing collaborations of its partners. It uses autoimmune vasculitis as a paradigm because it is scalable, the analysis of different forms will allow the influence of age and gender to be assessed, and comprehensive biological and clinical datasets are already available.
The HELICAL training programme focuses on three complementary objectives:
1. application of informatics to such datasets to gain new biological insights
2. translation of biological into practical clinical outputs
3. identification of the novel ethical constraints imposed on such studies and development of strategies to manage them.
The programme is delivered through a multidisciplinary and trans-sectoral partnership of world-leading researchers from Academia and Industry with expertise in biomedical research, epidemiology, statistics, machine learning, health data governance and ethics.
By the end of 2020, strong progress has been made on meeting the deliverables, mainly relating to administration and management of the programme, and establishment of a solid ethical framework for the research. Despite the global pandemic, all ESRs are well established in their projects, interacting through virtual journal clubs, and HELICAL-linked publications have started to appear. An active dissemination programme has led to a series of 15 second videos, a Science Week installation and lively social media interaction across multiple platforms.
Examples of research progress beyond the state of the art include:
• Successful development of artificial intelligent approaches to working out how a white blood cell gets activated by proteins from the patient’s own body
• A tantalising association between sulphur dioxide pollution and occurrence of vasculitis
• The first epigenetic profiles in specific white cell subsets from patients with vasculitis
• Comprehensive optimisation of isolation of the tiny particles that break off from cells in the body
• Development of a novel artificial intelligence imaging approach to analysing kidney tissue
HELICAL will depart from the current state of the art by fostering a precision medicine approach in vasculitis by developing tools that can identify and predict disease flares, informing the clinician about opportunities to discontinue immunosuppressive medication, and identifying therapeutic strategies that target relevant components of the immune system and blood vessel wall, leaving intact the ability to fight infection and malignancy.