Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 12 July 2022
698. Deputy Alan Dillon asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the status of €10 million Irish-led project to deliver more tailored treatment to those with motor neuron disease supported by the Government through Science Foundation Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37048/22]
View answerPrecision ALS, is an ambitious academic, clinical and industry research programme that will provide new insights in our understanding of Motor Neuron Disease (MND), also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
Precision ALS, which is led by two SFI Research Centres – ADAPT and FutureNeuro – involves world class Irish-based researchers in clinical science, data science and artificial intelligence (AI). The researchers will work in partnership with TRICALS, an independent consortium of leading ALS experts, patients and patient advocacy groups across Europe. National and international industry partners and charities including patient organisations are also actively participating.
The research is supported by Science Foundation Ireland through an investment of €5 million, which will be leveraged with an additional €5 million from industry partners.
Precision ALS will provide an innovative and interactive platform for all clinical research in ALS across Europe that will then harness AI to analyse large amounts of data. As the largest international multimodal dataset aimed at precision medicine for this condition, Precision ALS will address the issues with gathering new data at scale in a timely and cost-effective manner across multiple international sites to present that data in real time to clinical scientists.
Irish researchers, along with their European collaborators in ALS/MND, have shown that the disease is caused by variable combinations of faulty genes that likely interact with lifestyle and environment. Using big data analysis, Precision ALS will provide the technology to improve our understanding of how these factors impact the development of the disease. This in turn will inform which treatments will work for each individual, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.
Precision ALS is a unique programme that brings together Clinicians, Computer Scientists, Information Engineers, Technologists, and Data Scientists. The researchers will work together with a number of companies including Biogen, Novartis, Takeda, IQVIA, Roche and Accenture to generate a sustainable precision medicine-based approach towards new drug development that will have many benefits including better clinical outcomes for patients and reducing the economic cost of these diseases.
On completion, Precision ALS will be a first-in-kind modular transferable pan-European ICT framework for ALS that can be easily adapted to other diseases that face similar precision medicine-related challenges.
This research project began in December 2021 and will run for 48 months.
