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Exchanging knowledge and experiences between European projects – IMI APPROACH and Horizon 2020-funded PERMIT consortia

News 2021

Last month Dr. Ali Mobasheri (University of Oulu, Finland), co-leading the work on biomarkers within the IMI APPROACH project, spoke about the work done in the consortium at a meeting of the PERMIT project, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission. The exchange of knowledge, practices and learnings between European projects is of paramount importance if we are to address the challenges in the field of osteoarthritis therapy in a concerted and effective way.

Dr. Ali Mobasheri is a Professor of Musculoskeletal Biology at the University of Oulu (Finland), an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) and President of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI). At the recent PERMIT project meeting, Dr. Mobasheri held a presentation entitled “Strengths and weaknesses of preclinical in vitro models of joint tissues for use in osteoarthritis research””. Among others, he spoke about in vitro preclinical models used in basic research into cartilage biology, clinical osteoarthritis research and drug development, and personalized approaches in osteoarthritis therapy. He discussed different types of emerging in vitro models of joint tissues and explained that these are essential for basic research in cartilage biology, preclinical research, drug discovery and screening. However, Dr. Mobasheri stressed that none of the currently available in vitro models of osteoarthritis have demonstrated the ability to recapitulate the complexities of the disease. Therefore, we need more innovation in this area in order to be able to understand the basic pathophysiological mechanisms, as well to be able to facilitate basic drug discovery and development and finally - enrich the drug pipelines leading to clinical trials.

In the context of this meeting Dr. Ali Mobasheri presented the research and objectives of the APPROACH consortium. He discussed the scientific challenges in the field of osteoarthritis and the methods used in the APPROACH project to address them. Among these are the lack of specific and sensitive endpoints to differentiate between responders and non-responders to certain therapeutic solutions for osteoarthritis. Another great challenge is the lack of appropriate outcome measures which could robustly identify the right patient to benefit from a specific therapy. Dr. Mobasheri explained that the aim of the APPROACH project is to combine biomedical data from people with and without osteoarthritis into a unified bioinformatics platform with the goal of identifying different OA phenotypes. Thereafter, the impact of the APPROACH project will be on the identification of the right patient for the right treatment. APPROACH researchers will develop guidelines for the differential diagnosis of these patients. Moreover, as a result of the APPROACH clinical trial, researchers will be able to find phenotype and progression rate of the condition and facilitate targeted treatment (trials) for osteoarthritis.

About PERMIT

PERMIT (PERsonalised Medicine Trials) aims to develop and disseminate recommendations on personalised medicine research methodology. The overarching objective of PERMIT is to ensure the scientific excellence, validity, robustness, reproducibility, and acceptability of results from preclinical studies feeding into clinical trials. Coordinated by the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN) and funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Find out more about the PERMIT project here.

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