DECISION for liver: European researchers seek to reduce the number of patients dying from cirrhosis

FÜRSTENFELDBRUCK, Germany - April 15, 2020 - PRLog -- • Despite a vast array of available interventions and medications, more than 1 million people die of chronic liver disease (cirrhosis) per year worldwide, when the disease progresses to decompensated cirrhosis and acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF), a state in which the dysfunctional liver induces failure of other organs.
• Following an acute decompensation of cirrhosis, 14% of the patients die of ACLF within 3 months. The reasons why certain patients die and others survive are unknown, but huge differences between patients with regard to their individual genetics, medical history, precipitating events, clinical presentation and treatment response are suspected.
• These individual differences call for personalised treatments based on a precise understanding of underlying mechanisms. Systems medicine and high-throughput technology nowadays allow for highly efficient analysis, integration, and predictive modelling of clinical data to develop the best fitted, most personalised treatment for each patient.
• Over the next 5.5 years, the DECISION (https://decision-for-liver.eu/) research consortium will analyse and integrate data from already existing clinical data and biological samples from 2,200 patients with cirrhosis at more than 8,600 time points to identify novel combinatorial therapies, validate them in animal models, and then test the most promising combinatorial therapy in a clinical trial.
• The overall aim of the DECISION project is to prevent ACLF and to significantly reduce the mortality rate amongst patients with decompensated cirrhosis. The project receives 6 million € funding from the European Commission.
• Professor Pierre-Emmanuel Rautou (MD, PhD), member of the European Foundation for The Study of Chronic Liver Failure (EFCLIF), Barcelona, and professor for hepatology at the French Université de Paris (APHP) and the French Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM), spearheads and coordinates DECISION. The 21 institutions that collaborate in this multi-centre project are spread throughout Europe and include hepatologists, molecular biologists, systems medicine specialists and patients' association. The multidisciplinary team strives for high-impact dissemination of scientific results and improved clinical guidelines.

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 847949. This press release reflects only the view of the author or authors (scientific coordinator and contact & translating personnel), and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.