Grant: Personalized Medicine in Inflammation Network - LOI

In the current application, we provide a thoughtful approach to patient-centred care in inflammatory rheumatic diseases, with a focus on systemic lupus (SLE) and vasculitis, both chronic, potentially life-threatening diseases that pose a huge burden to patients, health care systems, and society. Novel 'biologic' drugs may provide new opportunities to dramatically alter outcomes. This LOI describes our "NETCARE" (NETherlands-CAnadian Rheumatic diseasE) team which builds on scientific strength, long-term collaborations, and well-established clinical cohorts. We propose a major research initiative to facilitate personalized and effective treatment decisions, using large datasets and multiple distinct lines of investigation. Our application proposes cutting edge statistic approaches to define predictive factors, including biomarkers, in population-based and clinical cohorts. This will allow us to build clinical prediction models for both harm and benefit, for a variety of drugs. These models will then be used to create risk-calculators that can be used by physicians, patients, or policy-makers makers, in their efforts to optimize outcomes in inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Data for economic analyses (health care use, work and non-work activities) will be collected to see if personalized or 'precision' medicine approaches lead to more cost-effective strategies. Other patient-related outcomes will be chosen with the input of team members from Lupus Canada, the Vasculitis Foundation, and Netherlands counterparts. Other key outcomes include enhanced patient engagement and capacity, and the creation of an international network to facilitate new randomised clinical trials in systemic autoimmune diseases. Although our proposal focuses on SLE and vasculitis, our methods can be employed across the spectrum of autoimmune rheumatic diseases, including myositis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other conditions.