Multi omics for personalised therapies addressing diseases of the immune system

The scope of this topic is to integrate and use high quality genome, epigenome, proteome, metabolome, microbiome data produced by large scale international initiatives with innovative imaging, functional, structural and lifestyle/environmental data, and combine these with disease-oriented functional analysis to contribute to the understanding of health and disease with the final objective of selecting relevant biomarkers for clinical validation that will lead to the development of new targeted therapies for diseases of the immune system. Proposals must build on data from IHEC and, as appropriate, on data from other international initiatives. Proposals should address relevant ethical implications, take into account sex and gender differences and include a section on research data management. International cooperation is requested. Proposals addressing rare diseases of the immune system are not in scope of this action.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 12 and 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Despite much progress in 'omics' and epidemiological research in recent years, the knowledge on the combined role of genetic and non-genetic factors in health and disease is still limited, thus hampering the full development potential of personalised medicine[[Personalised medicine refers to a medical model using characterization of individuals’ phenotypes and genotypes (e.g. molecular profiling, medical imaging, lifestyle data) for tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time, and/or to determine the predisposition to disease and/or to deliver timely and targeted prevention. The term ""personalised medicine"" is used throughout this Work Programme with this definition in mind.]].

There is increasing evidence that interactions with the environment, as reflected in genome-epigenome-proteome-metabolome-microbiome crosstalk, play an important role in disease development and progression. International initiatives such as the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) and the International Human Microbiome Consortium have generated high quality comprehensive large scale data catalogues and maps. The challenge is to build on the existing high quality data deposited in relevant databases (e.g. but not limited to: http://epigenomesportal.ca/ihec/, http://docs.icgc.org/data-portal) and combine these data and knowledge with lifestyle and environmental data, thus accelerating the translation into novel targeted or personalized interventions. These objectives cannot be accomplished on an individual country level which calls for broad transnational collaboration.

• Translate big data and basic research results into clinical applications.
• Contribute to exploiting data from IHEC and, as appropriate, data from other international initiatives.
• Identify and select new biomarkers for clinical validation in stratified patient populations
• Develop new targeted therapies for diseases of the immune system with high prevalence.
• In line with the Union's strategy for international cooperation in research and innovation proposals should create strategic synergies between scientists across disciplines, sectors and around the globe.