ImmuneHealthSeed: Determining immune profiles of patients with Immune Mediated Inflammatory Diseases for immune-targeting medicines.

From academia and private partners, a team of experts in disease-overarching immunology, and preclinical and clinical disease-specific experts aims to decipher disease-overarching immune profiles and regulatory networks in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. ImmuneHealthSeed is the first foundation to build towards the larger initiative ImmuneHealthXL. We envision fruitful long-term collaborations to accelerate the development of novel treatments and diagnostics to improve the quality of life for all who are affected by immune-mediated diseases.

In many diseases, the immune system plays an important role. Worldwide, millions of lives can be saved by immune-modulating curative cancer treatments (over 8 million worldwide annually). Furthermore, hundreds of millions of chronic inflammatory diseases (5 to 7% of the Western society) and patients suffering from allergies (10-30% of the world population) would benefit from a curative immune-modulating treatment approach rather than life-long daily treatments.

Yet, a disease-overarching approach focusing on a fundamental understanding of the different disease pathways is lacking. Much is to be gained in a fuller understanding of immune homeostasis: an immune system fit enough to fight off viruses but not so aggressive that it attacks healthy tissue.

We will monitor patient-reported immunological disease activity via serum/plasma immune proteomics and identify common underlying immune mechanisms driving (re)activation of disease-associated dendritic cell (DC)-T-B cell networks. In parallel, we will design novel nanotherapeutic immunotherapies to counter disease reactivation mechanisms. We will generate various formulations of tolerance-inducing- or immune-silencing nanoparticles and evaluate which formulation is best suited.

This project will lay the foundations for curative treatments for immune-mediated diseases. The potential societal and economic impact of this project is therefore huge.