The NORDTREAT project will build on the achievements within recent large-scale European initiatives that includes cross-disciplinary collaborations between academia, hospitals, biomedical companies and patient organisations. The overall aim is to improve Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients' prognosis and quality of life by introducing a novel personalized medicine algorithm that is based on recently generated -omics data.
IBD is a disease entity of unknown origin, characterized by a chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract. IBD is increasing, especially among teenagers, and today 0.5-1% of the Nordic population is affected. The disease course varies from an indolent course to an aggressive, treatment refractory disease, with need of repeated hospital admissions, surgery and increased risk of comorbidity including cancer. Thus, IBD have severe consequences for many affected individuals, including life-long medication, hospitalizations, recurring sick-leaves, and surgical interventions.
The extensive heterogeneity among IBD patients, specifically inter-individual variability with respect to disease progression, is a major clinical challenge. Current IBD treatment is expensive and lacks in therapeutic precision, which reduces efficacy and safety and increases the risk of disease progression throughout life. In this project, our aim is to selectively identify patients with a poor prognosis based on a novel objective protein signature, recently identified by members of the NORDTREAT team, and adapt the treatment in these patients to minimize disease-induced damage on the gastrointestinal tract and to improve long-term disease outcomes.
NORDTREAT exploitation plan includes the development of this protein signature into a diagnostic application, implementation of this diagnostic application as a prognostic tool in healthcare and exploration of potential additional novel biomarkers in collaboration with the Nordic biomedical industrial sector and especially biomarker manufacturers. By implementing this personalised medicine strategy, NORDTREAT will reduce societal costs and improve quality of care for patients with IBD.
