Call for Letter of Interest in Multimodal Precision Medicine

The Precision Medicine Capability at SciLifeLab aims to facilitate translational research and clinical trials within precision medicine (read our Roadmap). As part of this, we have received funding from the Swedish research council to increase accessibility to our national infrastructure, to support clinical trials in precision medicine with cutting-edge technologies. With this aim, the Precision Medicine Capability now invites clinical researchers (PI) to submit Letters-of-Interest, LoI, for co-developing collaborative projects to test feasibility of generating interoperable multimodal data on clinically relevant samples at SciLifeLab.

About the call

This call will fund 2-3 pilot projects to perform multimodal analyses at any of SciLifeLab’s  technology platforms aiming to increase feasibility of bedside-to-bench-to-bedside coordination.

The pilots will mainly focus on sample flow, both bedside-to-bench and cross-platform including data integration. All needed permits need to be in place and sampling processes should aim to align with routine sampling and an efficient use of patient material to avoid unnecessary sampling, The pilots will focus on feasibility in generating multimodal data on small clinical cohorts (10s of patients) and the exact sample processing flow will need to be customized together with the PI and the technology platforms according to sample sets available and the requested data types to be generated. The funding provided will cover for the experimental costs and the expertise at the technology platform.

All data generated within the pilots should meet the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) by using  data models for metadata according to the requirements provided. The Precision Medicine Capability will, together with Data Center, support both the technology platforms and the PIs in achieving this goal. Furthermore, if there is existing data on the cohort, we can together with the PI test feasibility of additional data integration using the data models.

Expected Outcomes

The expected outcomes from these pilot projects are to develop standard operating procedures (SoPs) for optimal use of limited clinical material for multi-technology analysis. The pilots will explore how to improve on sample and data flows between Healthcare and SciLifeLab in generating data from multiple platforms, to align data analysis and interoperable data generation. This provides a unique opportunity for the PI to investigate the feasibility of multimodal approaches in their cohorts and on using meta data models for data integration with the coordination support of the Precision Medicine Capability.

Who can apply?

The applicant should be a clinically active researcher, who must hold a PhD.

Funding

Precision medicine capability will financially support the platforms for the multimodal analysis including salary and reagent costs as well as sample coordination. Metadata models will be provided by the Data Center. We expect in this co-development that both the PI and the technology platform to invest time, expertise and reasonable resources towards the pilot projects.

Application process

The letter of interest should be filed through the Anubis system.

Your letter of interest must include the following descriptions:

• Current status of project and include information on the informed patient consent, ethical permit and biobank registration to ensure they allow for additional data generation and sharing of samples with SciLifeLab.
• Description of the team incl. clinical PI, other clinical and academic expertis available to the pilot
• Description of the existing sample flows and how they link to routine flow
• Description of sample types and number of samples collected/month or year
• Number of patients available and existing collected data
• Wishes and clinical need for multi-technology analyses
• Existing data management processes  
• Additional existing funding to support the pilot
• Possibilities for multi-site studies 

Further guidance is provided in the application form.

Timeline

Feb 22, 2024: Opening of call
April 24, 2024 : Application deadline
June 21, 2024: Funding decision
September 1, 2024: Start-up of selected projects