The U-BIOPRED program, purported to be the largest and most complex dataset of severe asthma data ever assembled, has proven effective in supporting the personalization of treatment for those with severe asthma in a recent research project. The studies that evaluated the first six years of its implementation were conducted using unbiased biomarkers developed for the U-BIOPRED program by the European Translational Information and Knowledge Management Services (eTRIKS) and the tranSMART Foundation.
U-BIOPRED is a dataset led by researchers at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands that was established almost six years ago and was granted the 2014 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award. Currently, approximately 135 investigators from 27 different organizations work to analyze the data from the platform regarding severe asthma.
Despite the efforts, doubts remained in the scientific community about the effectiveness of the dataset and if translational researchers would use the tool as a resource. However, the eTRIKS analysis demonstrated that investigators are in fact using it at unprecedented levels and improving the possibilities of offering personalized treatment to severe asthma patients.
In addition, researchers are collaborating and working on common databases to improve therapy for the lung condition through the exchange of ideas and workflows after conducting research using the data provided by U-BIOPRED.
“eTRIKS provides gel without which we could be floating in pools of excess data with no direction,” stated Professor Ian Adcock at the Imperial College. “U-BIOPRED is using these data to produce at least 60 publications to advance the understanding of the complex causes and subtypes of severe asthma. The eTRIKS/tranSMART platform is a key ingredient to making this happen.”
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“As the use of the tranSMART platform continues to rapidly increase, it is exciting to see how it is making a true impact on translational medicine research in a wide array of therapeutic areas,” added the CEO of the tranSMART Foundation, Keith Elliston. “U-BIOPRED is an excellent example of how data scientists can leverage technology to collaborate, as well as eliminate redundancies and inconsistencies in the process, to advance science.”
The eTRIKS organization, which helps European projects working in the field of knowledge management, has been supporting the work conducted by U-BIOPRED by overseeing the data management lifecycle with the tranSMART platform. The system is an open-source knowledge management platform designed to be used by investigators that can share pre-competitive translational research data.