IMI APPROACH series of videos explain the research in the clinical study, its preliminary results and patient council experiences in the project

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease that leads to pain and joint deformities. Treatment targeted more specifically at different disease subtypes or phenotypes might lead to improved outcomes. The IMI-funded APPROACH* project (1 June 2015 – 30 November 2021) sought to develop a set of guidelines that allow for the selection of patients to support clinical trials with medication that is specifically designed for subsets of OA patients.

You can find out more about the APPROACH project here.

* APPROACH: Applied Public-Private Research enabling OsteoArthritis Clinical Headway

Lygature in APPROACH

Lygature, was instrumental in the set-up phase of the APPROACH consortium. In close collaboration with UMC Utrecht, Lygature coordinated and supported the complete two-stage application process, followed by the contractual negotiations between partners. Setting up the APPROACH project required extensive expertise in science, data infrastructure, and program management. In addition to coordination and project management, Lygature supported the APPROACH consortium by providing IT infrastructures for collaboration as well as project communication and dissemination, and management of patient involvement activities.

APPROACH is a pertinent example of Lygature’s mission to bring together a wide variety of public and private partners, who share clinical datasets to realize medical solutions for patients.  

You can find out more about Lygature’s work in APPROACH here. 

APPROACH videos
 

APPROACH project conception: from grant call to making a new OA drug

Learn more about the history of APPROACH from principal investigator Harrie Weinans (University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands), project coordinator Jon Larkin (GSK), and Chris Ladel (BioBone B.V.) – co-leader of bioinformatics:

The value of patient insights in APPROACH

“APPROACH has been very empowering to the patients – being able to contribute your knowledge makes you feel much better!” - APPROACH patient council chair Jane Taylor. “I think working with all the different researchers - some of them have never worked with patients before, has really changed some attitudes and researchers have told us that they talk differently now about patients.”

Computer algorithm in APPROACH

How was machine learning used in APPROACH and how did it benefit the project? Learn more about the computer algorithm in APPROACH in our video with Harrie Weinans, APPROACH Principal investigator, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands and Chris Ladel, APPROACH leader of bioinformatics research, BioBone B.V., The Netherlands:

APPROACH clinical study and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

“For your study you need participants and the most important thing is to keep in touch with them and engage them, because without them you don’t have a study”. Watch the video with Eefje van Helvoort, APPROACH MD researcher at University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands and Anne Karien Marijnissen, International coordinator of the APPROACH clinical study (University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands):

Can we predict progression of osteoarthritis?

“I think APPROACH has generated a really valuable database to further investigate osteoarthritis subgroups, looking specifically at patients who do have severe progression of their pain and understand they have that progression”. Hear more from Eefje van Helvoort (MD researcher at University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands) and APPROACH principal investigator Harrie Weinans (University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands):

Biomarker analysis in APPROACH: where we started and where we are going

“We are not treating the osteoarthritis population as a homogeneous population, where the ‘one size fits all’ paradigm has been thought to apply and it clearly doesn't. The idea of treating the whole population with a single drug is really outdated now.” Project coordinator Jon Larkin (GSK) and Ali Mobasheri (Professor of Musculoskeletal Biology at the University of Oulu (Finland), and President of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International) speak about the biomarker analysis in APPROACH and its potential to provide methods for future stratification of osteoarthritis patients.

How did APPROACH help us analyse the role of weight bearing in MRI cartilage thickness and radiographic joint space width?

Watch the APPROACH video with Mylène Jansen, Post-doctoral researcher at UMCU and learn more.

Role of MRI and different methods of analysis in the APPROACH study

“We found that MRIs are a very strong predictor of future progression of pain in osteoarthritis patients. We are really looking forward to continue working on this very rich data set that has been acquired through the APPROACH study.” - Frank Roemer, Professor in Radiology at the University Clinic Erlangen, Germany.

The use of GaitSmart in APPROACH

“The GaitSmart® data has been extremely useful to the APPROACH consortium and we've got two excellent papers out of it that show that it both objectively provides data on the patient's ability to do things, their function and to a lesser extent but also apparent to their pain and it also shows that it's more subtle but follows the trend of the patient's perception of this over time.” - Diana Hodgins, CEO at Dynamic Metrics.

Impressions from APPROACH

“I think APPROACH has provided a lot for anybody working in the osteoarthritis field. There's been a reasonable amount of data collected from the clinical study and I think the idea of having different phenotypes of osteoarthritis is going to be so important, because of the relative ease with which you will then be able to monitor the progress of osteoarthritis.” - Maureen Grossman, APPROACH patient council member.

How did the members of the APPROACH patient council experience their participation in the project? What are their learnings? Find our more in our video with impressions from APPROACH shared by APPROACH patient council members: