Academic Center for Inflammunity

By sharing the expertise of the different expert centers in this ACE the goal is to improve quality of life of the patients through improvement of shared clinical and fundamental research and teaching as well as by shared value based health care and its determinants.

Academic Center of Excellence

Research Activities

The research in this ACE for P&A IMID covers fundamental, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research with focus on autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases in joints, skin and gut in adults and children.

Combining the expertise of the different Centers (Pediatric & Adult: Rheumatology Center, IBD Center, Dermatology Center, Clinical Chemistry and Immunology) in this ACE (Figure 1: Structure of P&A IMID) direct access to human material of pediatric and adult immune-mediated diseases is accessible (biobank: early stage/treatment naïve and therapy responses including biological registry and outcome) to perform epidemiological, fundamental, translation and clinical research (Figure 2: Activities within the ACE P&A IMID).

Together with laboratory expertise in disease specific mouse models and biomarkers, the ACE will aim to understand the pathogenesis of the different immune-mediated diseases including potential overlap but also distinction in cellular and molecular pathways at early and destructive stages of the disease. Currently high profile fundamental, translational, clinical and/or epidemiological research is being performed within the Centers and in international collaboration networks.

Shared activities within the ACE are already present in some ongoing research projects and will be extended to others. Our intention is to integrate and extend these programs with the aim to form a chain from the patient to the lab and from the lab and population-based research back to the patient (Figure 2).

Type of

Collaborations

Educational

Contributions

Currently: Every ACE member is involved in a variety of educational activities both within the Erasmus MC as well as nationally and internationally at Ba, MSc and PhD level. Members contribute to Bachelor and Master programs for medical students, master programs of MSc Infection and Immunity and MSc Molecular Medicine and PhD programs for PhD students in rheumatology, immunology, dermatology, inflammatory bowel disease.

Aim: it is essential that all members of the ACE have detailed knowledge of the ethiopathogenesis of chronic inflammatory diseases in joints, skin and gut in adults and children. In consequence, both researchers and clinicians will be exposed to such education in all phases of their career. This ACE enclose high marks for professional education with outstanding feedback. New educational activities will be organized:

  • To determine denominators of chronic inflammation
  • To address epidemiological aspects of IMID
  • E-learning: basic immunology course for clinicians
  • E-learning basic clinical practice for researchers
  • To maximize creative thinking and stimulating new developments
  • (Inter)national P&A IMID congress organized every two years
  • Annual symposium IMID for master program of MSc This ACE consists at least 5-10 international students from Asia, India, Bangladesh, Europe and/or from other places in the world.

Patient

Care Activities

This ACE will be a clinical expertise center (nationally and internationally) with state of art patient care for immune-mediated chronic inflammatory diseases (Figure 3: Rationale for P&A IMID). All clinical centers within the ACE have prospective inception cohort studies investigating determinants and outcomes of chronic IMID.

Additional strength of this ACE:

  • Significant improvement and optimization of therapy by sharing information on:
    • Effects of different treatment strategies with a particular interest in the value of biological therapy in relation to conventional therapy
    • Biomarkers and drug efficacy in the different IMID
  • Development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools to reach stable remission of the disease
  • Set up of a biological registry to monitor disease outcome, test new strategies, measure value based health care outcome in daily practice
  • Adult care and pediatric care are each organized in one care center (weekly multidisciplinary meetings and parallel outpatient consultations and one (future) day care center)
  • A well-defined care path for transition from pediatric to adult care and a care path for pregnancy.
  • All care is closely linked to different lines of research
  • The patient perspective is actively involved through Patients Panels for care and research.
  • Health care is promoted with various e-health tools

Societal Relevance to Research, Education and Patient Care

This ACE contributes to:

  • Development of (inter)national guidelines for RA, SpA, pregnancy and arthritis
  • Targeted work: fit for work / target at work
  • Shared decision making (innovation)
  • Reuma-app: "voorlichting op maat" (prevention and therapy)
  • New biomarkers to predict drug efficacy and toxicity contributing to patients quality of life: Despite overlapping susceptibility gene profiles and ethiopathogenesis of many immune-mediated inflammatory diseases treatment success is highly variable and clinicians share common problems such as therapy resistance and adverse responses. In this ACE society will profit from the expertise of the different expert centers to improve diagnosis, predict disease course, optimize treatment and improve quality of life of the patients through shared clinical and fundamental research and teaching as well as by shared value based health care and its determinants.
  • Teach students about autoimmune and chronic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases as a new discipline: until now tissue specific immunology in the fields of dermatology, rheumatology and gastroenterology have evolved as individual separate disciplines. With this ACE we will focus on identifying common disease mechanisms. This focus starts with teaching common basic immunological processes that underlie these diseases. During the coming years we will build a new discipline incorporating new common discoveries and therapeutic outcomes.

Viability of Research, Education and Patient Care

  • P&A IMID is an advanced knowledge sharing ACE with a transfer program beyond three major immune-mediated inflammatory disease including transition from pediatric to adult, a common biology registry, and specific basic and translation knowledge in and between research laboratories that are strongly connected with clinical activities within the P&A IMID ACE
  • Although this ACE is not fully established yet, many ACE members have international working experience and are keynotes in their discipline. By combining and collaborating these different expertise's within this ACE basic and clinical research of autoimmune and chronic immune-mediated inflammatory diseases will be boosted and will develop into increased international recognition with increased opportunities for grant applications, attracting the best students and participating in international conferences
  • Annual bibliometric network analysis will be performed

Key and relevant publications of the last five years

  • De Jong PH, et al. Ann Rheum Dis 2013, 72:72-78.
  • De Rotte MC, et al. Ann Rheum Dis 2015, 74:408-14.
  • Van Hamburg JP, et al. Arthritis Rheum 2011,63:73-83.
  • Menckeberg CL, et al. Gut 2015, 64:884-93.
  • De Bie CL, et al. Inflamm Bowel Dis 2013, 19:378-85.
  • Parikh K, et al. Sci Transl Med 2014, 6:233ra53.
  • De Lima A, et al. Gut 2015, May 12. pii: gutjnl-2015-309321.
  • Deckers IE, et al. J Am Acad Dermatol 2015, 72:485-88.
  • Corneth OBJ, et al. Arthritis Rheum 2014,66:340-49.
  • Onderdijk AJ, et al. J Immunol 2015,195:1744-52.

PhD theses of the last five years

  • H. van der Zee. Hidradenitis suppurativa: pathogenesis and treatment (2011)
  • C.I. de Bie. Pediatric inflammatory bowel disease: from diagnosis to transition (2012)
  • P. H.P. de Jong. Management of early rheumatoid arthritis: solving the unresolved (2013)
  • E.M. Baerveldt. Psoriasis: molecular targets of denervation and therapy (2013)
  • F.D.O. de Steenwinkel. Fetal programming in rheumatoid arthritis (2013)
  • M. de Rotte: A toolbox for personalized medicine of methotrexate therapy in arthritis (2014)
  • E. de Boer: Therapeutic drug monitoring of methotrexate-polyglutamates (2014)
  • S.M.J. Paulissen: The role and modulation of pathogenic CCR6 positive T helper cells in rheumatoid arthritis (2015)
  • M.A. van Leeuwen. Regulation of T cell responses in the inflamed intestine (2015)
  • A. de Lima. Optimizing care for pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease (2015)

Non-scientific publications related to the ACE

Principal coordinator(s)

Last updated: 365 days ago.