PRISM: Precision medicine in severe asthma
Research type
Research Study
Full title
PRISM: Molecular phenotyping of participants with severe asthma to determine response to biologic therapies and stability
IRAS ID
273192
Contact name
Becky Ward
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Joint Research Compliance Office, Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
Severe asthma is asthma that does not respond adequately to existing treatments including steroids and bronchodilators and is a disease with different types (phenotypes). With the recent introduction of antibody treatments (also called biologics) to block proteins such as IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13, a raised blood eosinophil count is used to select patients for this treatment.
Work done in the European U-BIOPRED cohort of severe asthma has defined different types of asthma based on measuring genes and proteins in blood or sputum cells. This approach provides a better classification of asthma being able to inform us of the cellular processes or proteins involved in causing the asthma, and ultimately, the type of treatments for each of these different types of asthma.
In this project called PRISM, we will perform molecular classification of 200 patients from 3 severe asthma leading centres in the UK, patients that are being managed according to national guidelines. They will be recruited for assessment of their clinical status and obtention of samples of blood, urine and sputum taken for molecular analysis at entry and at 6 and 12 months. Some patients (~40%) will receive biologic treatments. At the end of this study, we will be able to (i) determine the molecular type of asthma of each patient (ii) whether for those treated with biologic therapies, the knowledge of their precise molecular phenotype is a better predictor of good response (iii) for those who do not qualify or fail therapy with these biologics, indicate what other treatments would be more suitable.
This is the approach of Precision Medicine to bringing newer more effective treatments to subgroups of severe asthma by analysis the genes and proteins from these patients. It will tell us the precise treatments needed by each patient with severe asthma.REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/LO/0531
Date of REC Opinion
2 Jul 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion