Our news

3 years after the official start of this 7-year project, INNODIA participants came together for their 3rd annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. This year the meeting ran from November 5-7th and was organized by Novo Nordisk, one of our EFPIA partners. Attendance rates were again very high with at least 1 participant from each of the partners and a total of more than 140 attendants. This means that all the academic and clinical institutes, as well as the EFPIA companies and foundations, were well represented. We were also very happy to welcome some members of the Patient Advisory Committee.



Over the last year, the different aspects and goals of the project have moved forward at full speed, led by the work package leaders and guided by the INNODIA coordinator Dr. Chantal Mathieu. Recruitment is rapidly increasing with a total of 1620 participants enrolled. Of these participants, 160 are newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients, leaving 1460 first-degree relatives participating in the study. 96 relatives were found to be autoantibody positive and are now followed up by the clinical centers. We believe recruitment will continue to grow, especially since several satellites are already fully operational in the United Kingdom and Paris, and others are opening in Germany, Italy, and Belgium in the course of 2019. The EUnPOD initiative also continued to grow and now has two type 1 diabetes and six non-diabetic pancreas samples.

The growth of the INNODIA project was again illustrated by the enormous increase of publications, thanks to the hard work of the partners, particularly from the basic research work package. Since there are more and more papers where multiple partners have worked together, the value of this network of diabetes specialists is clear. Highlights of these interesting findings were presented by the different partners, after which a fruitful discussion followed. Also young PhD students were given the chance to show their findings, either via a presentation, or during the poster session.



Since INNODIA is all about working together, we are happy to announce that a collaboration will take place between INNODIA and GPPAD! GPPAD is another international research project that focusses on screening for the risk to develop type 1 diabetes in infants. Both INNODIA and GPPAD have one common goal: A world without 1! Which is why we think this collaboration is a match made in heaven.





And finally… We are able to say that clinical trials will commence in 2019! 2 clinical trials will start shortly, and thanks to the development of a master protocol, that will be the backbone for all the clinical trials run under INNODIA, it will be easier for partners to submit a clinical trial proposal to the clinical trial prioritization committee.



Overall, this 3rd annual meeting, with all Principal Investigators attending, but also with many nurses and young scientists (PhDs and postdocs) attending and interacting, resulted in a very fruitful meeting. We believe everyone felt happy after 3 days of working together towards the final goal of INNODIA: a better understanding of T1D, which should hopefully lead to innovative translational approaches to finding a cure for the patients. Until next year!