Collaboration with EU-funded projects
EuCARE is a member of the Cohort Coordination Board (CCB). The CCB groups the existing COVID-19 cohort projects. The purpose is to establish a structured collaboration among cohort-based research projects and other relevant initiatives. It has been set up after the meeting organised on 2.2.2022 by the European Commission and its main objectives are to:
- Provide an update on the status of ongoing cohort studies, including early results and final outcomes;
- Avoid overlapping and duplication of efforts (not just in cohort research but also in the creation of tools and infrastructures);
- Combine forces to achieve better results (e.g. larger sample sizes, stronger powered results, and wider dissemination);
- Share approaches to overcome common encountered obstacles (e.g. shipment of samples across national borders, lack of common dictionaries, electronic tool to link anonymous patient IDs to multiple samples and WPs);
- Organize training activities for best practices within sub-working groups of interest;
- Share documents of relevance for cohorts and with a view to greater harmonization (DPMs, Data Sharing Agreements, Material Sharing Agreements, Informed Consent);
- Make recommendations to the European Commission for future research in this area.
The CCB includes, other than European Commission representatives, all the EU-funded projects conducting COVID-19 cohort-based research and other relevant initiatives such as the European COVID-19 Data Platform, partners from industry and other stakeholders (e.g. EMA and ECDC). The board is organized in two levels, namely with a core group and extended group who is invited to participate as the need arises and according to the topic of discussion.
Up to now, all funded projects have been presented in their main objectives and activities and regular updates are provided by each one about the interim progress, cohorts and publications. Studies Protocols and study proposals have been discussed; possible clustering activities have been identified for relevant local or international events.
EuCARE participates in all the activities of the CCB. In particular, it actively contributes to the two CCB working groups: Epidemiological analyses/methodology and Definition of Long COVID.
The CCB is involved in and funded by the COMECT project (COordination MEchanism for Cohorts and Trials), started on 1st December 2023. COMECT is led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and will strengthen existing networks and infrastructure. These include EU-funded coordination mechanisms and networks, namely the Trial Coordination Board (TCB), Joint Access Advisory Mechanism (JAAM), the Cohort Coordination Board (CCB), and the Ecraid Coordinating Committee].
Projects involved in the Cohort Coordination Board
EuCARE answers to an emergency call from the European Union, in the frame of the Horizon Europe programme, to confront the COVID-19 epidemics and in particular the newly emerging SARS-COV-2 variants under several aspects.
With the support of strong immuno-virological and artificial intelligence components, the project will take advantage of large hospital patients, vaccinated healthcare workers, and schools’ cohorts in Europe, Kenya, Mexico, Brazil and Vietnam to find an answer to urgent issues related to science and society.
EuCARE gathers clinical cohorts from 10 strategic countries across Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America. Overall, the hospitals have enrolled, until now, more than 44,000 hospitalised patients, PASC and healthcare workers (HCW) from very diverse countries, with a wide coverage of different vaccines, different healthcare systems, different viral variants, distributions and different treatment protocols.
Additionally, EuCARE focuses on schools, expanding the ongoing school screening program from Germany and Mexico to include newly enrolled schools in Portugal and Italy, covering all school grades. The school cohort now includes 28 schools in Italy, Portugal and Mexico, with more than 460 classes across all ages, from very diverse areas in terms of urbanisation, socioeconomic status, containment protocols and use of PPEs.
EuCARE is funded by the European Union.
The COVICIS project is focused on contributing to early identification of emerging Variants of Concerns (VOCs), and obtaining in-depth understanding of the risk and protective factors to SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as the evolution of the virus in different risk, gender and age groups.
The project’s mission is build around five objectives:
- Identifying emerging new VOCs through genomic surveillance in different cohorts
- Deciphering the risk and protective factors to infection in different risk, gender and age groups
- Evaluating the impact of VOCs on the effectiveness of vaccines induced humoral and cellular responses in different populations and regions in the European Union and Sub-Saharan Africa
- Identifying immune correlates of protection against VOC through the development of algorithms predicting the impact of emerging VOC on the efficacy of vaccines
- Informing the future vaccination strategy and design of the next generation of vaccines.
The project is led by Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and involves 14 partners from 7 countries – Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ethiopia and South Africa.
COVICIS is funded by the EU Horizon Europe program.
To know more visit COVICIS website
ORCHESTRA is an international research project with the aim of tackling the coronavirus pandemic by providing an innovative approach to learn from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and derive recommendations for the management of COVID-19 and to be prepared for possible future pandemics.
The project builds upon existing and new large scale population cohorts in Europe and non-European countries.
The ORCHESTRA cohorts include four components:
- General population – 9 large population-based cohorts (infected, not infected). The existing cohorts include a total of 440,000 individuals
- COVID-19 cohorts and long-term sequelae – 10 cohorts. The existing cohorts include more than 11,500 records
- Fragile individuals -Elderly, children, pregnant women, HIV-infected, transplanted and those with Parkinson diseases or rheumatological diseases – infected and non-infected. The existing cohorts include a total of 18,000 records
- Health-care workers –Includes 9 cohorts (infected, not infected). The existing cohorts include a total of 160,000 records
The ORCHESTRA is led by the University of Verona and involves 26 partners (extending to a wider network of 37 partners) from 15 countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Congo, France, Gabon, Germany, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Venezuela.
ORCHESTRA is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
To know more visit ORCHESTRA website
The European Patient Safety Foundation (EUPSF) is an independent, non profit, organisation that unites experts and leading organisations to drive patient safety forward across Europe.
The EUPSF is a multi-speciality oriented group believing that a significant improvement in patient safety is possible only by empowering patients and healthcare professionals through people-driven, collaborative, sustainable approaches.
The EUPSF mission has three main purposes:
- Empowerment of people by ensuring European patients, healthcare professionals and providers are informed, trained and empowered in their roles to provide the safest and highest quality care possible.
- Driving Change by the creaton of partnerships with leading organisations and experts in the field of patient safety, developing initiatives and policy proposals that genuinely advance patient safety across Europe, making it a tangible reality for all patients.
- Fostering collaboration by connecting patient safety stakeholders across Europe, creating a united network who share knowledge, tools and recommendations for implementing innovative practices, to improve patient safety and outcomes.
To know more visit EUPSF website
SYNCHROS (SYNergies for Cohorts in Health: integrating the Role of all Stakeholders) has the aim to create a sustainable European strategy for the development of a next generation of integrated cohorts population, patient and clinical trial cohorts.
SYNCHROS focus is to address the practical, ethical and legal, and the methodological challenges to optimising the exploitation of current and future cohort data, map the cohort landscape in Europe and large international initiatives, identify the best methods for integrating cohort data, identify solutions for addressing practical, ethical and legal challenges in integrating data across patient, clinical trial and population cohorts, and evaluate the use of emerging and new data collection technologies and types of data.
SYNCHROS will make sustainable recommendations on standards to improve future sample, data collection and data sharing methods and disseminate this information so as to contribute to defining an international strategic agenda for better coordination of cohorts in Europe and beyond.
SYNCHROS is funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.
To know more visit the link below.
The REACT project aims to assess genotypic, high-dimensional immunophenotypic, demographic, and clinical data in the context of the disease course to define host-pathogen interactions of viral respiratory tract infections, focusing on predominant viruses, i.e., influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and severe acute respiratory virus (SARS-CoV-2), to predict the course of the disease, to allow targeting and personalisation of treatments, the identification of therapeutic targets, as well as defining and improving vaccination efforts.
The project will analyze patient and virus characteristics, patient-pathogen interactions, and by immunological characterisation, creating ethnically diverse retrospective and prospective cohorts.
Results on the identified factors critical for viral control and immune protection will be made widely available to aid the design of novel and personalised treatments against respiratory viruses, and to create the basis for better diagnosis, treatment and management of these infections in future pandemics.
The REACT project currently includes 10 partners from 4 different countries, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and South Africa.
REACT is funded by the European Union.
To know more visit REACT website
END-VOC is a project that supports the global response to COVID-19 and future pandemics by investigating the circulation and impact of current and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC). To do so, data from well-established patient and population cohorts across the world is being used.
Data is collected from 28 cohorts in 23 countries to address five key questions:
- Detection and characterization of emerging variants
- Study of immune evasion and reinfections
- Evaluation of VOC’s ability to escape current treatments
- Explore the causes of Long Covid
- Provide recommendations to improve the management of future infectious disease outbreaks.
END-VOC is funded by the European Union.
To know more visit END-VOC website
unCoVer (‘Unravelling Data for Rapid Evidence-Based Response to COVID-19’) project is a functional network of 29 partners capable of harvesting real-world data derived from the response and provision of care to COVID-19 patients by health systems across Europe and internationally.
These real-world data comprise mostly information from electronic medical records from front-line hospitals, as well as national surveillance data, registries, and integrate information from over 300,000 COVID-19 patients initially, and anticipated to increase as databases are being updated on a continuous basis.
The unCoVer ptoject seeks to bring together European and international expertise to monitor, identify, and facilitate the access and utilization of this type of data, identifying knowledge gaps, and underrepresented populations, and proactively seek synergies with complementary existing and planned clinical databases.
To know more visit unCoVer website
VACCELERATE is a clinical research network for the coordination and conduct of COVID-19 vaccine trials. Besides offering expertise, services, resources and solutions to speed up existing and upcoming development programmes as well as market authorisations for new vaccines and vaccination strategies, VACCELERATE also conducts capacity mapping of new clinical trial sites and laboratories with standardised methods and protocols, and provides educational measures, training and quality management for harmonized vaccine trials. It already holds information on 491 clinical trial sites in 39 European countries.
The network is comprised of academic institutions from all over Europe: The consortium is led by the University Hospital Cologne, and currently includes 31 partners in 18 EU-member states and 5 countries associated to the EU Horizon 2020 research programme.
VACCELERATE is funded by the European Commission’s activities for future pandemic preparedness.
To know more visit VACCELERATE website
ReCoDID (Reconciliation of Cohort data in Infectious Diseases) project is a multidisciplinary, international collaborative network with the aim to address some of the most pressing issues in the development of personalized medicine approaches to infectious disease with a focus on the global response to emerging pathogens.
ReCoDID builds on existing infrastructures and partnerships to develop a sustainable model for the storage, curation, and analyses of the complex data sets collected by infectious disease (ID)-related cohorts. While ID cohorts collect both clinical-epidemiological and terabytes of OMICS data, storage and analysis of CE and high dimensional laboratory data remains separate and developing the infrastructure for housing and analyzing high dimensional laboratory data is generally not feasible for individual studies.
The project is coordinated by Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany and brings together 13 complementary partners from four continents.
ReCoDID is a four-year project supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme.
To know more visit ReCoDID website
The Long COVID project aims to understand the predisposing factors and mechanisms for the development of the Long Covid Syndrome (LCS).
The research evidence created during the project will be simultaneously used to develop and improve the care of Long Covid patients suffering from the long-term effects of COVID-19 infection.
The project will develop and apply a machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)-informed Long Covid Prediction Support (LCPS) tool to predict and stratify the PCC patients.
The project is led by HUS Helsinki University Hospital HUS and the Consortium consists of many leading EU research organisations, such as the University of Helsinki, the University of Basel, the University of Zurich and the University Medical Center Groningen. Additionally, a German company NEC specialised in artificial intelligence and machine learning is involved in the study as other companies, such as Lipotype, Nuromedia and Steinbeis Europa Zentrum from Germany, Protobios from Estonia, Chino from Italy and Spinverse from Finland.
Long COVID is funded by the European Union.
To know more visit longcovid website
VERDI is a project focused on prioritising pregnant women, children and high-risk populations in research on new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and focuses on preparedness for future infections outbreaks, building on experiences with COVID-19 and mpox.
VERDI project aims to generate improved evidence on the epidemiology, outcomes, prevention and treatment of variants of SARS-CoV-2 amongst children and pregnant women as a global response to the pandemic, involving cohort studies from diverse geographic and economic settings and to improve understanding of the epidemiology and impact of mpox in children, pregnant women and high-risk groups. The evidence and insight arising from the multidisciplinary research will help to rapidly deliver recommendations on the best strategies to control viral spread and optimize clinical management and treatment of COVID-19 and mpox infection.
VERDI project is coordinated by the University of Padua and Penta Foundation (Italy), with scientific coordination shared between University of Padua and University College London and has a Consortium consisting of 29 centers worldwide.
VERDI project is funded by the European Union.
To know more visit VERDI website