3TR hopes to unravel the mystery of why treatments don't work in some patients
Treatment is hit-and-miss
Many patients with autoimmune, inflammatory and allergic diseases do not respond well or at all to current treatments. A major challenge for researchers is to understand which patients are most likely to respond to which treatments. The 3TR project, which started recently, aims to shed new light on the factors that determine whether or not a patient is likely to respond to a given treatment.
3TR will focus on seven diseases: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite their diverse symptoms, these diseases have some molecular patterns in common, suggesting that patients with different diseases may share some markers that predict the likelihood of treatment response and disease progression.
Getting personal for better patient outcomes
The project will analyse data and samples from 50,000 patients who took part in 50 clinical trials. They will also carry out a new clinical study that will take samples (of diseased tissue, blood, stool and other fluids) from patients before, during and after treatment. The project will add all of its data to a centralised data management platform that will make it easier to analyse using state-of-the-art methods. The samples collected and the knowledge base will be maintained beyond the end of the project to allow further research.
The project will ultimately make it easier to provide the right treatment to the right patient, thereby increasing the proportion of patients taking a treatment that works for them.
Better quality of life
‘3TR has great potential to transform and significantly enhance the management of patients with chronic inflammatory diseases by introducing a scientific evidence-based rationale for treatment selection, rather than following the traditional trial and error approach,’ said IMI Executive Director Pierre Meulien. ‘This will increase therapeutic success, reduce risks of avoidable side effects in patients unlikely to benefit from the drug they are prescribed, reduce health care costs, but above all: improve the patient’s quality of life.’
The 7-year project has a total budget of EUR 80 million; half of this comes from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation, while the other half comes from the EFPIA companies in the project.
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