Schizophrenia (SZ) is a severe mental disorder affecting more than 0.7% of the adult population. One of the most disabling and emotionally devastating illnesses known to man, SZ is also associated with considerable socioeconomic burden. In general, the chronic nature and the high degree of patient disability make SZ the fourth leading cause of disease burden across the globe with the management costs making up ~3% of the total healthcare budget in the Western countries. The situation is even direr in some regions, including northern Sweden and Finland, where relative prevalence of SZ exceeds two to three times corresponding national or regional averages. Poorly understood aetiology and limited diagnostic arsenal make it difficult to detect and treat SZ in a timely and efficient manner. This underscores a critical need for better understanding of the mechanisms underlying SZ and development of new diagnostic possibilities allowing its early detection, ideally prior to the onset of psychosis. The SZ_TEST will address these challenges by coordinating efforts with complementary areas of expertise in genetics, epigenetics, neurodevelopment, molecular psychiatry, clinical immunology and biotech R&D. The overarching hypothesis underlying our work is that genetic vulnerabilities, neurodevelopmental defects, exposure to pathogens, immune system status and specific lifestyle choices may compound the risk of SZ and that a systematic multivariate analysis of these factors should result in substantially improved diagnostic tools. SZ_TEST will work towards the development of molecular diagnostics tools for early detection of SZ, by using relevant cohorts of human subjects, unique animal and cell models, and combining unbiased high-throughput omic screens with knowledge-based candidate marker analyses. SZ_TEST training network is expected to have a major impact on improving the quality of life and reducing the health care costs in Europe and worldwide.

The PROFILE Innovative European Industrial Doctoral programme will develop improved tools for stratification of patients with the autoimmune disorder acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP). Patient stratification is needed in order to further develop personalized medicine approaches for human disorders. Therefore, a detailed understanding of the disease at the molecular level is needed. Furthermore, implementation of a robust set of novel biomarkers is essential for stratification of patients. Also, highly flexible platforms to rapidly develop novel therapeutics are crucial to further boost the field of personalized medicine. The research program is embedded in a unique translational training program, which emphasizes clinical needs as a driving force for development of novel, innovative diagnostics and therapeutics (for personalized medicine). There is intersectoral knowledge transfer between academia and companies at the European level as 6 different EU Member states are involved in the network either as beneficiary or partner organization. The PROFILE network will allow 6 early stage researchers to follow this unique translational training. They will be trained in the clinic to identify clinical needs, in academia where they will contribute to a scientifically ambitious project and in the non-academic sector where they will be trained in a novel technologies and commercializing bioassays endowing them with an unique PROFILE for further advancing personalized medicine in Europe.

PANBioRA aims at providing a comprehensive solution for the time- and cost-effective risk assessment of i) new biomaterials under health or disease states or ii) a given biomaterial for each patient in a personalized manner. It will standardize the evaluation of biomaterials and open the venue for pre-implantation, personalized diagnostics for biomaterial based applications. PANBioRA will provide a modular platform to assess risks at different aspects and length scales. This comprises antibody response, cytotoxicity/genotoxicity at cell level, systemic and local effects at tissue and connected tissues (organ-on-a-chip) level. Moreover, physicochemical and biomechanical characterisation as well as predictive modelling at systems level will complement the system. This will be achieved by connecting testing modules in a structure supported by web-based modelling and risk radar tools together with a biomechanical testing system. The platform will incorporate standardized protocols yielding significantly more information than the current methods for biomaterial risk assessment. Its accuracy will be demonstrated using known reference materials and validated in a pre-clinical setting. PANBioRA will for the first time, predict the patient specific response to a given biomaterial before its implantation. This measure will allow for the selection of the best suitable material, minimizing side effects and improving health outcomes. It will also accelerate the process of validation of the biocompatibility of new devices by providing an automated, comprehensive process for the parallel assessment of risks at different scales aiding new biomaterial discovery and commercialisation. Altogether, PANBioRA will lead to a substantial economic impact due to a reduction of the amount of tests, decrease in healthcare costs due to complications. It will provide the necessary tools proper risk management related to biomaterials.

Chronic diseases (cancer, heart and mind diseases) are the leading causes of illness and death. By 2020 their contribution is expected to rise to 73% of all deaths (of which nearly half as premature). To radically reduce the related healthcare spending and contribute to healthy ageing, it is important to diagnose these diseases as early and accurately as possible by analyzing biomarkers. However, the current analytical platforms have been unable to handle the huge amounts of data that need to be analysed for the discovery of new biomarkers, and as a result: (1) only a small number of new biomarkers have been discovered and (2) current routine diagnostic tests are able to provide only a very restricted overview of patient’s health status. Protobios applies a ground-breaking high-throughput antibody repertoire characterization technology Mimotope Variation Analysis (MVA) to discover new biomarkers, develop novel multiplexed diagnostics, and empower the discovery and development of therapeutics and vaccines. Compared to competing technologies, MVA is superior because (1) it allows to detect and distinguish many different disease signatures simultaneously and (2) the scalability and associated low cost of the MVA process make it applicable for frequent analysis, providing the additional advantage of establishing a robust health assessment tool. We have used MVA technology to provide clinical diagnostics' development services in a pilot format to a limited number of biotech companies and research institutions. We have witnessed growing demand and signed six-figure contracts for 2018. The key component of MVA is a sophisticated bioinformatics platform that enables molecular profiling of the immune response at an unprecedented resolution and accuracy. For full-scale market entry, we need to scale up the technical capability of the ICT platform so that the MVA service capacity grows by at least 100 times (corresponding to annual revenues of €20-25 million).