Impact

A key expected outcome of 3TR is a better understanding of the mechanisms of response and non-response to therapy that may reshape our way of clinical practice in the various diseases concerned. Moreover, the consortium will aim to potentially transfer the knowledge gained in relation to the seven diseases looked at in 3TR, into further research and clinical implementation of other diseases.

On a more practical level, 3TR foresees the identification of

• novel disease markers of non-responders across multiple diseases in order to better predict disease outcome and patient stratification, to improve disease management for patients and
• markers for specific pathways amenable for specific therapeutic leads or targets suitable for groups of patients across diseases thus paving the way for new treatment approaches.

Obviously, a key criterion for the identification and evaluation of these new markers will be their potential for future clinical application.

Furthermore, a central “product” will be the "Autoimmunity Disease Explorer Portal” or “ADEx", a resource to integrate publicly available -omics data (gene expression, methylation and metabolomics) for the 3TR diseases with data generated in 3TR. This tool will allow users to easily extract information at a gene level or at disease/dataset level for different applications. It will implement functionalities to explore patterns across all published datasets in an integrative approach. Meta-analysis techniques will be incorporated to integrate datasets from different studies or different diseases in order to query the database to define common biomarkers and explore molecular pathways related to autoimmune diseases.

Based on these new insights, 3TR has enormous potential to transform and significantly enhance the management of patients suffering from one or more of these diseases by introducing a scientific evidence-based rationale for a more patient-centred treatment selection following a precision medicine approach. This will increase therapeutic success, reduce risks of avoidable side effects in patients, unlikely to benefit from the drug they are prescribed, and thus improve the patient’s quality of life.