4th Edition - May 2011

U-BIOPRED recruits first adult into major asthma study

IMI project U-BIOPRED has recruited the first of over 1 000 people into a major new study of severe asthma. U-BIOPRED researchers will draw on data from blood and tissue samples, lung function tests, exhaled air samples and examinations of the airways, plus reports of people’s own experiences, to build up a detailed picture (or ‘handprint’) of each individual’s condition. By comparing data from hundreds of people, the team hopes to identify groups of patients with similar handprints. These groups will allow researchers to define different kinds of severe asthma, paving the way towards personalised treatments for patients. U-BIOPRED project coordinator Peter Sterk of the University of Amsterdam said that running such a study would have been “unthinkable” without IMI.

Eu2P – applications for courses now open

IMI Education & Training project Eu2P has launched its online application tool for its Certificate and Master courses in pharmacovigilance and pharmacoepidemiology. Certificates are available in a wide range of subject areas and run over 9 weeks (for a standard certificate) or 18 weeks (for an extended certificate). The Masters course offers six curricula that address the professional needs of key specialisations in pharmacovigilance and pharmacoepidemiology. The application period runs until 20 June for the Masters course and 19 August for the Certificates. The first courses will start in September this year. Courses are delivered largely online using interactive web technologies. In 2011, the Masters course is only open to people wishing to embark directly on the Master Year 2. Applications for the Master Year 1 and the Eu2P PhD programme will be launched in April 2012.

IMI project Open PHACTS on the value of data

Researchers from the Open PHACTS project have published a paper in Nature Genetics that proposes representing data and assertions in the form of nanopublications. The nanopublication is the smallest unit of publication and is essentially a single assertion and its associated data and material. According to the team, using nanopublications will make it easier to place a value on data, support research by tapping into vast, interoperable reserves of information, and also make it easier for scientists and others to follow up individual assertions or develop hypotheses. Open PHACTS will test the nanopublication concept to create an Open Pharmacological Space (OPS). In the OPS, a layer of data and text extraction methods is placed over existing data of different kinds (e.g. rough data, processed datasets and literature). The methods allow close to real time updates of nanopublications from these databases and make them publicly available via the OPS, but do not interfere with local database management. ‘The Open PHACTS consortium thus creates an extra, computer readable layer that works across previously isolated datasets,’ explains the lead author of the paper, Barend Mons of Leiden University Medical Center and the Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre.

eTOX in heart toxicity test breakthrough

Scientists in the IMI project eTOX  have developed a computer model to test potential medicines for cardiotoxicity. Currently, many promising drug candidates fail because they turn out to cause serious heart problems in patients. The new eTOX system should help researchers pick up on these problems earlier on in the drug development process. Users simply have to enter the molecular formula of the compound into the tool, and the system generates a simulated ECG (electrocardiograph). Clinicians routinely use ECGs to diagnose heart problems in their patients; in the same way, users can study the simulated ECG generated by the eTOX system to determine whether or not a compound is toxic to the heart. ‘It provides better results than the currently used computational systems,’ commented eTOX project coordinator Ferran Sanz of Fundació IMIM in Spain. Details of the new tool are published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling.