Decision on Optimal Combinatorial Therapies in IMIDS using Systems Approaches

The DoCTIS project has been designed to address this important health problem in IMIDs. To do so, we will identify new combinations of existing drugs that potentiate the effect of each other. This combinatorial effect will have many beneficial aspects for IMID patients: it will lower the disease activity down to remission (i.e. free of symptoms), it will allow to reduce drug dosage (and, therefore, reduce the risk of toxicity) and, finally, it will reduce the probability of becoming resistant to the therapy.

DoCTIS is a multicentric project involving diverse basic, applied and clinical research centres from Spain, Sweden, Italy, Germany, UK and USA, and is aimed at improving treatment efficacy in six Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases (IMIDs). These IMIDs encompass Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Through the generation of high volumes of data using modern high-throughput technologies on samples from well-characterized IMID patients, and the use of advanced systems biology analytical approaches, we aim to identify therapeutic combinations that are much more efficacious and safer than the current single-drug approaches.