RESPIRE-EXCEL · Respiratory Precision Medicine PhD Training Network- Excellence through Systems Biology, Spatial and Single-cell Transcriptomics

Asthma and COPD are prevalent, chronic respiratory diseases, with high incidence and societal costs. Current treatment is based on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, that suppresses symptoms, but fails to achieve stable remission of disease. There is an urgent need to replace these generic treatments with precision medicine for asthma and COPD. This transition is hampered by the complexity of asthma and COPD on the one hand, and by the lack of an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to achieve progress towards precision medicine for these chronic respiratory disorders on the other hand. The complexity of asthma and COPD is caused by multiple molecular mechanisms that independently contribute to the pathogenesis of disease. Their activity varies over time, and between patients, leading to substantial heterogeneity of asthma and COPD: identical clinical phenotypes can be caused by dissimilar molecular and cellular mechanisms, and requiring different treatments. The vision of RESPIRE-EXCEL is to achieve the transition to precision medicine in asthma and COPD by cross-sectoral and multi-disciplinary collaboration in respiratory research, drug discovery and development. The success of this approach depends on respiratory scientists with the competence to combine expertise across disciplines, and the skills to collaborate with experts from industry, healthcare and academia. Therefore, the goal of RESPIRE-EXCEL is to enable the transition to precision medicine for asthma and COPD by training the next generation of translational and physician scientists with the skills, cross-sectoral competences and multidisciplinary knowledge to identify the molecular mechanisms of asthma and COPD, develop improved prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers to detect their activity in individual patients, and support the development of novel treatments that target individual disease mechanisms, aiming to achieve stable remission of disease in asthma and COPD through precision medicine.