Rationale​

​​​Chronic inflammation, a condition present in various diseases including those with an immune component, is an important cause of morbidity/mortality in the developed world. A wide range of disorders fall into this disease category. These are rare or common disorders, whose best management requires an integrated approach, tightly linking clinicians from internal medicine or medical specialties to research teams with translational research programs in the field.

The rationale for TRANSIMMUNOM stems from three main paradigms:

• Recent progresses in understanding inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

  ​​​This has led to realize that they form a continuum ranging from pure inflammatory diseases to pure autoimmune diseases. This encompasses a large panel of inflammatory diseases with some autoimmune component and autoimmune diseases with an inflammatory component. Thus, their cross-evaluation should translate in a better understanding of each disease pathophysiology.

• The immune system is a complex dynamic system made of a network of specialized cells and molecules.

  Although the reductionist approach deployed to study it over the last 30 years has contributed major findings, there is a dimension of the immune response that can only be studied at more global, multilevel scales. Systems Biology offers the tools to perform such studies and will allow us to :

  • improve our understanding of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases,
  • identify novel genes/pathways,
  • and to discover biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
• Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are particularly suitable to the development of novel immunotherapies based on either drug, protein or cell intervention.

  Of note, the monitoring of any intervention that modifies the immune response has a cognitive dimension.​

The Transimmunom consortium comprises:

• ​Clinicians with strong research activities, with expertise covering immunopathology and inflammatory diseases, and with major records including pioneering clinical trials,
• Immunologists with expertise in state-of-the-art immune investigations and records in developing novel technologies,
• Scientists with expertise in computer science, bioinformatics, biostatistics, text-mining and data management,
• Three SMEs, ILTOO Pharma, Pharnext and Prediguard, involved in biomarker discovery and biotherapy development.

​Objectives

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Our General Objective Is:

to study inflammation and immunopathologies by integrating basic, clinical and information sciences. We aim to break down some artificial boundaries by analyzing important phenotypes that cut across diagnostic groups and reconsider current disease classification schemes. ​

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Our Specific Objectives Are:​

• ​​​to cross-phenotype thirteen inflammatory and autoimmune diseases
  
• to discover and validate biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets to improve diagnosis and prognosis and treatment
• to improve and develop biotherapies based on this knowledge​