In this project, a multinational consortium of high-tech SMEs, academic research institutes, biotech and pharma partners, affiliated patient-centred organisations and professional societies will achieve a multi-faceted diagnostic and prognostic platform and a precision medicine approach. This consortium will together realize a patient empowerment centred decision support system that will enable multiple stakeholders to participate in improved and more rapid diagnosis and prognosis, as well as the potential of precision medicine for accelerated development of new therapies. Citizens and patients will be empowered to contribute to the efficient planning and usage of resources. The project will begin by rapidly delivering a nomogram. Data from the pandemic will be used to validate and further optimise a scalable multifactorial diagnosis/prognosis solution. Existing and new data and sample collection efforts will be used to perform molecular profiling, which - using advanced AI techniques will be shaped into a precision medicine approach. These initial outputs will undergo further enhancement and assessment to evaluate the value they add to the development of a decision support system. The entire effort will be supported by the deployment of a federated machine learning system that will allow for the GDPR compliant use of multinational data resources. The various iterations of the decision support system and the federated machine learning system will be made available to other coronavirus initiatives with the intent to develop a stakeholder community that forms the basis for a highly efficient innovation ecosystem. Our proposed study will be one of the first to develop innovative machine learning, and clinical procedure improvement that will potentially make a huge socio-economic impact for the coronavirus outbreak.

FRESH AIR is a 3 year project which addresses the urgent need to prevent, diagnose and treat lung diseases in LMICs and other low-resource settings where the greatest burden of disease is experienced. Our Consortium brings together leading international respiratory researchers, clinicians and policy experts from EU member states and the US who have expertise and experience of the challenges of implementation in LMICs and healthcare providers, policy makers and implementers from four countries that represent very different low-resource settings. Members will work together to adapt and test innovation and evidence-based practice in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of lung disease in four low-resource settings in Uganda, Kyrgyz Republic, Vietnam and Greece with high levels of tobacco consumption and exposure to Household Air Pollution (HAP). In so doing, the Consortium will transfer skills and technology from EU member states and the US to new contexts and explore a range of implementation science research questions. The new knowledge this generates will be widely disseminated nationally, regionally and internationally, ensuring the scale-up of interventions tested by the project and global impact of research findings. The project will also provide new perspectives on policy issues of concern to EU members, increase the international profile of EU funded research on key health challenges and open up markets for healthcare innovations. The project has 7 specific objectives focused on the following: 1. Identifying factors influencing the implementation of evidenced-based interventions 2. Exploring which awareness-raising approaches are most effective in achieving behaviour change 3. Adapting interventions that provide smoking cessation support 4. Testing innovative diagnostic methods for COPD 5. Promoting pulmonary rehabilitation as a low cost treatment 6. Reducing children’s risk of lung damage 7. Generating new knowledge, innovation and scalable models.

Smoking and other forms of tobacco consumption are considered the single most important cause of preventable morbidity and premature mortality worldwide. Tobacco product design and additives provide a primary industry tool for innovations that may undermine public health programs and support tobacco use and dependence. The past years have seen the development and adoption of many new cigarette technologies and design features, including new tobacco blends, filters, ventilation and additives, including flavours. Within this evolutionary process, novel tobacco products have emerged -including e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, that further perpetuate the complexity of understanding and subsequently effectively regulating products. Within EUREST-RISE, an integrated series of research studies are proposed that will facilitate the training of researchers (ESR and ER) to examine tobacco product systems, their mechanisms and purpose, and interactions between key design characteristics and their assessment in populations of users. The project will achieve its goal through 5 specific objectives (WPs): 1 – To facilitate smooth implementation of secondments and research exchanges; 2 – To facilitate the exchange of expertise on complex dataset analysis and interpretation at both the product and population level through unique secondary dataset analyses; 3 – To exchange expertise on the sensory and chemical analysis of tobacco, e-cigarettes and novel product flavour additives; 4 – To exchange expertise and gain experience in advocacy, policy integration and communication on tobacco control; 5 – To ensure dissemination and communication of the results to stakeholders. It is this gap that the EUREST-RISE project will cover through the creation of a cohort of researchers who will be trained as scholars on state-of-the-art aspects of European tobacco product regulatory science.

Current anti-tuberculosis (TB) drug regimens face serious limitations at times of increasing antimicrobial drug resistance. Fortunately, for the first time for centuries, several novel anti-TB compounds are available for clinical evaluation. As the traditional approach to testing these in multiple combination regimens is too slow and inefficient new approaches of clinical phase 2 study designs are required if we are to meet the targets of the WHO EndTB strategy to save the lives of millions into the near future. Our consortium brings together a unique group of European and international leaders in TB research and leading industry partners. Together we will provide the necessary comprehensive range of expertise to meet the demands of the UNITE4TB scientific research agenda. Specifically, we will develop a new global standard for phase 2 TB clinical trial designs, utilising simulation tools to identify optimal doses in phase 2A trials and apply a multi-arm multi-stage adaptive randomised controlled 2B/C trial design capable of rapid and simultaneous evaluation of the best candidate regimens. Our innovative phase 2 trials will be performed to the highest regulatory standards, incorporating state-of-the-art microbiology, biomarker investigation and clinical pharmacology. We will take advantage of existing global TB clinical trial networks with the capacity to enrol patients at an unprecedented pace and number across four continents. Artificial intelligence/machine learning technologies will be applied to validate state-of-the art molecular and imaging tools as treatment decision biomarkers with the aim of establishing new, real-time outcome measures. Our consortium will evaluate 3-5 new chemical entities (NCEs) at phase 2A and up to 17 novel combination regimens in phase 2B/C. Our objective is to identify those that have the greatest chance of success in subsequent definitive phase 3 clinical trials and of becoming the global gold-standard TB regimens of the future.