ERC HORIZON Lump Sum Grant for the PerPrev-CID consortium to develop decision support tools for early rheumatological interventions

GCIR Professor Axel Finckh and Dr Céline Lamacchia, from the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, have received a prestigious grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the next five years. This research project aims to establish new standards for the development of decision-support tools to improve preventive care and early therapeutic interventions for patients at risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other autoimmune conditions. Based on multi-omics technologies, tool development will be tightly coordinated with Professor Ioannis Xenarios and the Geneva Health2030 Genome Center.

Need for better tools

Chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs) are a group of non-communicable disorders of the immune system with a lifetime prevalence of over 10% in the EU. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are two archetypal CIDs with a particularly high unmet medical need and impact on European healthcare systems.

Current guidelines for early intervention are often inconsistent due to a lack of standardised decision-making tools. This research aims to change that situation by developing frameworks that integrate biomarkers, clinical history and lifestyle factors to predict disease progression.

‘When considering at-risk individuals, clinicians still lack tools to reliably identify who will develop RA, or other CIDs. Making such a prognosis would allow proposing preventive interventions. Our research will lay the foundation for more consistent, data-driven decision-making in rheumatology care,’ said team member Dr Benoît Gilbert.

The consortium

The PerPrev-CID (Personalized Disease Prediction and Prevention in Chronic Inflammatory Disorders) consortium aims to create a world-leading research programme that sets new standards for early molecular diagnosis, development of decision support tools and patient stratification for preventive and early therapeutic interventions in RA and IBD.

The consortium brings together leading European and EU-associated research teams from Belgium, Germany, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK with a strong track record in clinical cohort research for quantitative and mechanistic studies of immune-related disorders using systems-level and/or omics approaches.

The multidisciplinary consortium comprises clinical scientists with experience in conducting clinical trials (registration studies and investigator-initiated trials) in both CID indications, computational biology analysts focusing on omics data and AI-based explainable methods (XAI) for the detection of disease markers, nutrition scientists and public health specialists.

Importantly, the patient organisations EFCCA and EULAR are full partners, encouraging the direct involvement of RA and IBD in this co-creation research approach.

Expected outcomes

The team plans to develop a series of support tools that will help clinicians to

- Predict disease onset and progression: Using advanced biomarkers and clinical data, clinicians will be able to identify high-risk individuals and detect early signs of diseases such as RA and IBD, enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment.

- Tailor treatment plans: With tools to monitor disease activity and relapses in real-time through patient-reported outcomes and wearable devices, clinicians can adjust treatments more effectively and prevent disease flares.

- Implement preventive strategies: The study's findings on nutritional and biological interventions will support the development of personalised preventive care, potentially reducing the risk of disease onset or progression in at-risk individuals.

Significance of the grant

This grant highlights the European recognition of the urgent need to improve clinical decision-making in CIDs. Early detection and intervention have been shown to reduce the long-term impact of RA, including joint deformities and disability. The decision support tools developed through this grant could revolutionise early RA care and serve as a model for the management of other chronic inflammatory diseases.

‘This funding will also allow us to develop a closer collaboration with the Health2030 Genome Center, in particular for the analysis of complex multi-omics datasets’​​​​​ said Prof. Finckh.

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