Introduction
Immune-mediated diseases (IMDs) are increasing rapidly in the developed countries, constituting a huge medical, economic and societal challenge. The reasons to this epidemic are not known, but exposome needs to play an important role since genetic factors cannot explain such a rapid change. In the HEDIMED project altogether 22 academic and industrial partners will join their multidisciplinary and supplementary forces to identify exposomic determinants which are driving this epidemic. The project is based on a combination of data and biological samples from large clinical cohorts. The HEDIMED consortium focuses on common chronic IMDs that cause a significant disease burden, including type 1 diabetes (T1D), celiac disease (CD), IgE-mediated allergic sensitisation and asthma, in which the exposomic influence is believed to be strong.
Project Objectives
HEDIMED project will address the interactions between external and internal exposomes to identify pathways that are critical for the development of IMDs. The study is based on a multidisciplinary approach combining modern omics technologies, multiplex assay technologies and intelligent sensoring with unique samples and data from dynamic birth cohorts, clinical exposomic intervention trials and cell and organoid cultures, land cover, air quality and reflectance data from earth observation satellites, and advanced data mining platforms and the modelling of economic impacts of exposomic determinants of IMDs.
The project will run during years 2020-2024 and it receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, as well as from the participating organizations.
Consortium
1. Tampere University, Finland (coordinator)
2. Lund University, Sweden
3. University of Helsinki, Finland
4. Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway
5. University of Turku, Finland
6. University of Oulu, Finland
7. Tartu University Hospital, Estonia
8. University of Siena, Italy
9. National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland
10. Charles University, Czech Republic
11. Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic
12. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
13. University of Tartu, Estonia
14. CSEM, Switzerland
15. Graz University of Technology, Austria
16. Baylor College of Medicine, the USA
17. Empirica, Germany
18. Satellio, Finland
19. Gnomon, Greece
20. COPSAC, Denmark
21. Pirkanmaa Hospital District, Finland
22. Natural Resources Institute Finland
Events
2020-02-12 HEDIMED kick-off meeting, Tampere, FI
2020-02-11 Launch event of the European Human Exposome Network, Brussels, BE
Publications
Coming soon
