Annual meeting Pisa: INNODIA keeps making progress!
23. March 2022
After 2 years of virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the consortium was delighted to finally meet their partners in person again!
From March 15-18th, almost 200 attendants, from academic and clinical institutes, as well as from the EFPIA companies and the 2 foundations involved in INNODIA, gathered in Pisa for a very intensive meeting. 100 people joined F2F, another 100 joined virtually. INNODIA was also very pleased to welcome Dr J. Skyler, who flew in all the way from the US.
Despite COVID, INNODIA has not taken a break! At the contrary. Led by the different work package leads and guided by the INNODIA coordinator Dr. C. Mathieu, all people involved in INNODIA kept working tirelessly, moving research and science forward to where we want to be; A better understanding of T1D, leading to innovative translational approaches to finding a cure for people living with the disease.
INNODIA recently reached the recruitment goal of newly diagnosed people with T1D in the observational study. In the next phase, the collected samples and data will be examined in great detail. However, sample collection of close relatives to people with T1D is still ongoing and very much stimulated.
INNODIA clearly is accelerating their understanding of T1D through coordinated studies of those unique clinical samples. Those findings are leading us to the delivery of novel biomarkers, for better disease diagnosis and are now tested in appropriate clinical designed trials.
The list of centers recruiting people in 4 different clinical intervention studies, becomes longer every week. Multiple INNODIA centers are eagerly waiting for the final approval from their ethics commission to also get started. These trials have been designed with the aim to halt the further decline in beta cell functionality in people with newly diagnosed T1D, addressing the immune system or the beta cells by different treatment modalities.
INNODIA is very proud to start welcoming ALL autoantibody positive people with an increased risk of developing type 1 diabetes, detected through screening programs outside INNODIA. Even people without a family member with T1D.
We believe it’s safe to say that this annual meeting, with almost all Principal Investigators attending, but also with young scientists (PhDs and postdocs) attending and interacting, resulted in a very productive and rewarding get together!
A special thank you to Dr. P. Marchetti and his team (University of Pisa) for organizing such a fruitful edition of the INNODIA annual meeting in a very professional way!