Publications by authors named "Bertrand de Meulder"

Background: Lung quantitative computed tomography (qCT) severe asthma clusters have been reported, but their replication and underlying disease mechanisms are unknown. We identified and replicated qCT clusters of severe asthma in two independent asthma cohorts and determined their association with molecular pathways, using radiomultiomics, integrating qCT, multiomics and machine learning/artificial intelligence.

Methods: We used consensus clustering on qCT measurements of airway and lung CT scans, performed in 105 severe asthmatic adults from the U-BIOPRED cohort.

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  • - PIONEER is a European initiative that combines the efforts of 34 organizations across 9 countries to enhance prostate cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment using big data analytics.
  • - The project has created a comprehensive platform that integrates various data sources, helping to respond to critical research questions and improve understanding of prostate cancer management at different stages.
  • - Despite successes, challenges with real-world data persist, necessitating ongoing collaboration and knowledge sharing, which PIONEER aims to support as part of the UroEvidenceHub initiative by the European Association of Urology.
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  • Metastatic prostate cancer (PCa) makes up about 5% of new diagnoses in Western countries, highlighting the need for effective systemic therapies, but concerns exist regarding the real-world applicability of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) used to establish treatment protocols.
  • The PIONEER project, part of the Innovative Medicine Initiative, aims to enhance cancer care in Europe by focusing on improving health outcomes and the efficiency of health systems through better understanding of RCT findings in real-world settings.
  • A systematic review will compare characteristics of patients from RCTs with those in population-based databases to assess how well RCT results apply to actual patients with newly diagnosed metastatic PCa and determine how many real-world patients qualify for RCT participation.*
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Combination therapies in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC), which include the addition of an androgen receptor signaling inhibitor and/or docetaxel to androgen deprivation therapy, have been a game changer in the management of this disease stage. However, these therapies come with their fair share of toxicities and side effects. The goal of this observational study is to report drug-related adverse events (AEs), which are correlated with systemic combination therapies for mHSPC.

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Background: Asthmatic patients with antibody deficiencies (AD) have more severe disease and higher risk of exacerbations. No data exist about the efficacy of biologics in severe asthma (SA) patients with AD.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of biologics in SA patients with and without AD.

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Introduction: The COVID-19 Disease Map project is a large-scale community effort uniting 277 scientists from 130 Institutions around the globe. We use high-quality, mechanistic content describing SARS-CoV-2-host interactions and develop interoperable bioinformatic pipelines for novel target identification and drug repurposing.

Methods: Extensive community work allowed an impressive step forward in building interfaces between Systems Biology tools and platforms.

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  • Androgen deprivation therapy has been the standard treatment for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC), but new combination therapies with chemotherapy and targeted agents have shown better results.
  • Recent advancements in treatment, including "triplet" therapies, are helping to improve outcomes for patients, although metastatic disease remains a complex clinical challenge.
  • This study aims to create and validate a predictive model to assess the risk of symptomatic progression, new treatments, and death in mHSPC patients based on their characteristics at admission.
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  • Conservative management for prostate cancer (PCa) aims to delay or avoid curative therapy, with the PIONEER initiative using big data to enhance PCa care in Europe.
  • The study analyzed over 527,000 diagnosed PCa cases, focusing on 123,146 patients who did not receive treatment within six months of diagnosis to assess long-term outcomes.
  • Findings showed common comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes among patients, with notable rates of hospitalization and symptomatic progression, though limitations included insufficient data on treatment intent and patient characteristics.
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  • Some people with asthma also have problems with anxiety and depression, and this study looks at why that might happen.
  • Researchers tested different groups of asthma patients and healthy people to see how their anxiety and depression levels compared.
  • They found that patients with severe asthma had higher levels of anxiety and depression, which might be linked to certain inflammation markers in their blood.
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PIONEER is a European network of excellence for big data in prostate cancer consisting of 37 private and public stakeholders from 9 countries across Europe. Many progresses have been done in prostate cancer management, but unanswered questions in the field still exist, and big data could help to answer these questions. The PIONEER consortium conducted a two-round modified Delphi survey aiming at building consensus between two stakeholder groups - health-care professionals and patients with prostate cancer - about the most important questions in the field of prostate cancer to be answered using big data.

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Background: Exacerbation-prone asthma is a feature of severe disease. However, the basis for its persistency remains unclear.

Objectives: To determine the clinical and transcriptomic features of frequent exacerbators (FEs) and persistent FEs (PFEs) in the U-BIOPRED cohort.

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Rationale: Asthma phenotyping requires novel biomarker discovery.

Objectives: To identify plasma biomarkers associated with asthma phenotypes by application of a new proteomic panel to samples from two well-characterised cohorts of severe (SA) and mild-to-moderate (MMA) asthmatics, COPD subjects and healthy controls (HCs).

Methods: An antibody-based array targeting 177 proteins predominantly involved in pathways relevant to inflammation, lipid metabolism, signal transduction and extracellular matrix was applied to plasma from 525 asthmatics and HCs in the U-BIOPRED cohort, and 142 subjects with asthma and COPD from the validation cohort BIOAIR.

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We need to effectively combine the knowledge from surging literature with complex datasets to propose mechanistic models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, improving data interpretation and predicting key targets of intervention. Here, we describe a large-scale community effort to build an open access, interoperable and computable repository of COVID-19 molecular mechanisms. The COVID-19 Disease Map (C19DMap) is a graphical, interactive representation of disease-relevant molecular mechanisms linking many knowledge sources.

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Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Enhancement Through the Power of Big Data in Europe (PIONEER) is a European network of excellence for big data in prostate cancer, consisting of 32 private and public stakeholders from 9 countries across Europe. Launched by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 and part of the Big Data for Better Outcomes Programme (BD4BO), the overarching goal of PIONEER is to provide high-quality evidence on prostate cancer management by unlocking the potential of big data. The project has identified critical evidence gaps in prostate cancer care, via a detailed prioritization exercise including all key stakeholders.

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  • - The study investigates whether high blood eosinophil counts have the same clinical significance in COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) as they do in asthma, revealing ongoing debates in the medical community.
  • - Researchers analyzed data from two cohorts (COPD and asthma) to study gene expression and the relationship between eosinophil counts and clinical characteristics, finding distinct genetic responses between the two conditions.
  • - The findings indicate that while asthma and COPD may share some clinical features, their underlying molecular mechanisms differ significantly, emphasizing the complexity of treating these respiratory diseases.
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Background: Stratification by eosinophil and neutrophil counts increases our understanding of asthma and helps target therapy, but there is room for improvement in our accuracy in prediction of treatment responses and a need for better understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

Objective: We sought to identify molecular subphenotypes of asthma defined by proteomic signatures for improved stratification.

Methods: Unbiased label-free quantitative mass spectrometry and topological data analysis were used to analyze the proteomes of sputum supernatants from 246 participants (206 asthmatic patients) as a novel means of asthma stratification.

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Type-2 (T2) immune responses in airway epithelial cells (AECs) classifies mild-moderate asthma into a T2-high phenotype. We examined whether currently available clinical biomarkers can predict AEC-defined T2-high phenotype within the U-BIOPRED cohort.The transcriptomic profile of AECs obtained from brushings of 103 patients with asthma and 44 healthy controls was obtained and gene set variation analysis used to determine the relative expression score of T2 asthma using a signature from interleukin (IL)-13-exposed AECs.

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Background: Severe asthma is a heterogeneous condition, as shown by independent cluster analyses based on demographic, clinical, and inflammatory characteristics. A next step is to identify molecularly driven phenotypes using "omics" technologies. Molecular fingerprints of exhaled breath are associated with inflammation and can qualify as noninvasive assessment of severe asthma phenotypes.

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