EuroPOND will develop a data-driven statistical and computational modeling framework for neurological disease progression. This will enable major advances in differential and personalized diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring, and treatment and care decisions, positioning Europe as world leaders in one of the biggest societal challenges of 21st century healthcare. The inherent complexity of neurological disease, the overlap of symptoms and pathologies, and the high comorbidity rate suggests a systems medicine approach, which matches the specific challenge of this call. We take a uniquely holistic approach that, in the spirit of systems medicine, integrates a variety of clinical and biomedical research data including risk factors, biomarkers, and interactions. Our consortium has a multidisciplinary balance of essential expertise in mathematical/statistical/computational modelling; clinical, biomedical and epidemiological expertise; and access to a diverse range of datasets for sporadic and well-phenotyped disease types. The project will devise and implement, as open-source software tools, advanced statistical and computational techniques for reconstructing long-term temporal evolution of disease markers from cross-sectional or short-term longitudinal data. We will apply the techniques to generate new and uniquely detailed pictures of a range of important diseases. This will support the development of new evidence-based treatments in Europe through deeper disease understanding, better patient stratification for clinical trials, and improved accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis. For example, Alzheimer’s disease alone costs European citizens around €200B every year in care and loss of productivity. No disease modifying treatments are yet available. Clinical trials repeatedly fail because disease heterogeneity prevents bulk response. Our models enable fine stratification into phenotypes enabling more focussed analysis to identify subgroups that respond to putative treatments.

Climate change is one of several drivers of recurrent outbreaks and geographical range expansion of zoonotic infectious diseases in Europe. Policy and decision-makers need tailored monitoring of climate-induced disease risk, and decision-support tools for timely early warning and impact assessment for proactive preparedness and timely responses. The abundance of open data in Europe allows the establishment of more effective, accessible, and cost-beneficial prevention and control responses. IDAlert will co-create novel policy-relevant pan-European indicators that track past, present, and future climate-induced disease risk across hazard, exposure, and vulnerability domains at the animal, human and environment interface. Indicators will be sub-national, and disaggregated through an inequality lens. We will generate tools to assess cost-benefit of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures across sectors and scales, to reveal novel policy entry points and opportunities. Surveillance, early warning and response systems will be co-created and prototyped to increase health system resilience at regional and local levels, and explicitly reduce socio-economic inequality. Indicators and tools will be co-produced through multilevel engagement, innovative methodologies, existing and new data streams and citizen science, taking advantage of intelligence generated from selected hotspots in Spain, Greece, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Bangladesh that are experiencing rapid urban transformation and heterogeneous climate-induced disease threats. For implementation, IDAlert has assembled European authorities in climate modelling, infectious disease epidemiology, social sciences, environmental economics, One Health and EcoHealth. Further, by engaging critical stakeholders from the start, IDAlert will ensure long-lasting impacts on EU climate policy, and provide new evidence and tools for the European Green Deal to strengthen population health resilience to climate change.

While outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIV) in Europe used to be rare and geographically contained, the situation has dramatically changed in the last few years with thousands of outbreaks reported in domestic poultry and wild birds. Despite being an intensive field of research, many unknowns remain as we are still struggling to predict HPAIV emergence, avoid viral spread and limit the socio-economic impact entailed predominantly by control measures. Vaccination of domestic poultry against avian influenza, is now being given full consideration, as it is becoming clear that traditional prevention and control approaches alone will not curb the accelerating pace of occurrence of devastating HPAIV epidemics. On 1 October 2023, France became the first EU country to implement a nation-wide vaccination campaign in ducks. However, vaccinating domestic poultry does not come without important challenges. VIVACE therefore aims at putting together a doctoral network to contribute to fully integrate poultry vaccination approaches into efficient management strategies for HPAIV. We will do so by unravelling the impact current and upcoming EU vaccination policies will have on avian influenza virus evolution, surveillance and control strategies and societal burden of HPAI. This will be done through a combination of disciplines from life sciences, epidemiology, computer sciences and social and behavioural sciences. The training program proposed here includes scientific and transferrable skill sessions, builds on the integrated added values of complementing expertise (virology, immunology, modelling, spatial and molecular epidemiology, social psychology, economics and policy), and full access to state-of-the-art technologies in excellent environments. The consortium gathers 15 universities or research institutes and 5 private companies, securing both inter-sectoriality and wide geographic distribution with tailored epidemiological and vaccination contexts.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most frequent neuroinflammatory disease. Despite new treatments that slow the progression of the disease, patients with MS (PwMS) frequently evolve towards major disability. The pathogenesis of MS is controversially debated, but the recent discovery that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a major risk factor will radically change research avenues. The BEHIND-MS consortium ambitions to understand how EBV promotes MS development. To this end, we have established a multidisciplinary team that will for the first time draw a comprehensive map of the interactions between the virus and all arms of the immune system in the blood and brain of PwMS and how they ultimately lead to neural damage, in the context of genetic risk factors. We will also develop an in vitro model of MS that integrates the virus, the immune system and brain cells reprogrammed from the blood of the same PwMS. Thus, for the first time, we will study in the laboratory the complex molecular mechanisms that give rise to MS. Finally, we will develop an animal model of prodromal MS that would be a ‘game changer’ for our understanding of MS pathogenesis and allow testing of promising new treatments. The pivotal knowledge developed in this project will empower the entire healthcare value chain to work towards better clinical management of MS. A detailed understanding of EBV-MS interactions, combined with newly identified biomarkers, and study models will open the doors for researchers, clinicians and industry to capitalize on the mechanisms underlying EBV-MS interactions, and develop new diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic tools and guidelines. Throughout the project, an open dialogue with the main stakeholder representatives will ensure a mutual understanding of patient needs and project results. Ultimately, by contributing to improved risk analysis, stratification and treatment strategies, BEHIND-MS has the potential to reduce the burden of MS on society.