SYSCID enters the final spurt

Time flies and it is hard to believe that SYSCID enters its final project year. All partners welcomed the recent extension of six months enabling them to continue their productive cooperation within the project until September 2022. 

It is hardly surprising that SYSCID as many other projects has been affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic in the past year. The pandemic hampered laboratory work, resulted in institutional lockdowns and travel restrictions yielding to a slowdown of the work in the project.

Nevertheless, the SYSCID partners have been able to use this time to generate significant knowledge on molecular processes involved in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 (see also recent publications). This was only possible as tools and methods had already been in place from previous work within SYSCID.

Results from the last year have identified first integrated molecular signatures, which may be able to predict the efficacy of anti-TNF therapy in inflammatory bowel disease, SLE and rheumatoid arthritis patients. The project extension now allows the consortium to make up for the delay and finalize its integrative analyses on chronic inflammatory diseases in order to refine outcome and therapy predictor patterns.

In the coming months, the SYSCID consortium will focus on finishing cross-sectional analyses, finalizing ongoing single-cell related work and work on longitudinal stability of obtained signatures.

Ultimately, the project will thus help to develop molecularly defined disease endotypes and dynamic models of therapy response that will enable efficient patient stratification for future care of CID patients.