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U-TRIAL supports promising consortium initiatives

  1. Consortium UCAN CAN-DU: personalized treatment for childhood rheumatism
  2. Consortium subarachnoidal bleeding
  3. Consortium pragmatic trials for type 2 diabetes
  4. Consortium INTENT: Personalized Intervention for IFN-driven Enteropathy in Common Variable Immunodeficiency
  5. Importance of clinical trial networks
  6. Interested in starting your own consortium?

09-05-2024

We connect with promising research initiatives and researchers. We also help start and support new trial consortia. As such, U-TRIAL is currently actively supporting and mentoring four promising consortium initiatives. All get a personalized program, which may also lead to knowledge exchange between the consortia. Here, we introduce these four consortia. 

Consortium UCAN CAN-DU: personalized treatment for childhood rheumatism

Led by: Bas Vastert​ en Joost Swart​  

UCAN CAN DU​ is a binational cohort study, funded by ZonMW, ReumaNederland and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, for all Dutch and Canadian children with childhood rheumatism and aims to develop ‘personalized medicine’.  

With U-TRIAL’s support, the researchers aim to develop UCAN CAN DU to an internationally biologically stratified clinical trial platform, wherein based on the found biomarkers and created profiles the impact of personalized medicine in new patients is tested. 

Consortium subarachnoidal bleeding

Led by: Mervyn Vergouwen​  

Every 8 minutes, somewhere in the world a brain aneurism bursts in a person’s brain, causing a bleeding between the meninges. This type of stroke is called a subarachnoidal bleeding (SAB). The average age of a SAB patient is 55 years and after three months, about 1 in 3 patients dies due to this condition. Patients that survive often have physical or cognitive side effects. The goal of this project is to create a consortium wherein clinical trials are performed that investigate the effectiveness of treatments to eventually improve the prognosis for this patient group. 

Consortium pragmatic trials for type 2 diabetes

Led by: Thomas van Sloten 

This consortium’s goal is to create more knowledge on the best treatment for type 2 diabetes. Cardiovascular diseases are by far the most important cause of death among people with type 2 diabetes. The last few years, different medication has become available that lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases among these people. However, many questions remain about how to best use this medication. Most of this medication has not been compared to each other, and it is unclear which combination of medication works best with what type of patient. New, innovative trial designs are now available to answer these questions, such as pragmatic trials. However, a consortium to facilitate these trials for type 2 diabetes does not yet exist. 

Consortium INTENT: Personalized Intervention for IFN-driven Enteropathy in Common Variable Immunodeficiency

Led by: Helen Leavis 

INTENT is a European consortium currently composed of experts from six countries with established cohorts of patients with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID). CVID is a rare primary immunodeficiency and highly understudied disease with no available evidence based treatments for inflammatory complications, yet a very high burden of disease. Enteropathy in CVID serves as basis for building a trial network to reveal immunopathogenesis and develop precision medicine based treatments with U-trial support.  

Importance of clinical trial networks

Starting a clinical trial network is an effective and successful instrument to bring more trials to the UMC Utrecht. Good examples are Ecraid for infectious diseases from professor Marc Bonten, Resvinet for children with RSV​ from professor Louis Bont and TRICALS for ALS​ from U-TRIAL Trial and Innovation Lead (TIL) Leonard van den Berg.  

TRICALS recently organized the third instance of TRICALS Masterclass, an informal get-together for top ALS researchers looking to find effective treatments for ALS. Focus of the three-day event was the discussion of innovations in clinical trials for ALS. The event also included industry officials, patient representatives and regulatory organizations. The event was chaired by Leonard van den Berg. 

Interested in starting your own consortium?

Interested to start your own consortium or learn more? Reach out to the team: u-trial@umcutrecht.nl  

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