The airways diseases asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affect over 400 million peopleworld-wide and cause considerable morbidity and mortality. Airways disease costs the European Union inexcess of €56 billion per annum. Current therapies are inadequate and we do not have sufficient tools to predictdisease progression or response to current or future therapies.

The AIRPROM Consortium brings together the exisiting clinical consortia (EvA FP7, U-BIOPRED IMI and BTS Severe Asthma), and expertise in physiology, radiology, image analysis, bioengineering, data harmonization, data security and ethics, computational modeling and systems biology. We shall develop an integrated multi-scale model building upon existing models. This airway modelwill be comprised of an integrated ‘micro-scale’ and ‘macro-scale’ airway model informed and validated by‘omic data and ex vivo models at the genome-transcriptome-cell-tissue scale and by CT and functional MRIimaging coupled to detailed physiology at the tissue-organ scale utilising Europe’s largest airway diseasecohort. Validation will be undertaken cross-sectionally, following interventions and after longitudinal follow-up toincorporate both spatial and temporal dimensions.

AirPROM has a comprehensive data management platform and a well-developed ethico-legal framework. Critically, AirPROM has an extensive exploitation plan, involving at its inception and throughout its evolution those that will ‘develop’ and ‘use’ the technologies emerging from this project. AirPROM therefore will bridge the critical gaps in our clinical management of airways disease, by providing validated models to predict disease progression and response to treatment and the platform totranslate these patient-specific tools, so as to pave the way to improved, personalised management of airwaysdisease.

More information

AIRPROM website