The European project TransQST has been implemented with a funding of €16 M. The initiative aims to improve the understanding of adverse drug reactions and systems modelling approaches to drug safety. The Integrative Biomedical Informatics Research Group, led by Laura Furlong and Ferran Sanz belonging to the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics, joint Pompeu Fabra University and Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (GRIB, UPF-IMIM) programme, is participating in this project coordinating Work Package 4: Systems Modelling Technologies. 

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are the unwanted side effects of medication. They can contribute significantly to patient morbidity, mortality and hospitalization costs.

Funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (IMI 2) the five-year project TransQST:  Translational Quantitative Systems Toxicology, aims to develop novel computational approaches using the best available data from the public and private domains to address the problems of drug safety.

TransQST is a partnership between ten academic institutions, three small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and eight pharmaceutical companies. The project will be coordinated by the University of Liverpool, and the pharmaceutical company AbbVie is the Project Leader. 

One of the main focuses of the project are “off-target reactions” which cannot be predicted from the known pharmacological properties of the drug. The main organs of concern for such reactions are the liver, the kidney and the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems.

Professor Kevin Park, co-ordinator, said: “The fear of ADRs is a major impediment to the development of new, safe and effective therapies; This project will enable us to leverage the best available data and expertise from both public and private domains to generate and validate novel computational models that will help to address the problems of safe drug development. Our ultimate aim is to maximize the benefits of medicines and minimize the harm.”

The focus of the TransQST project will be to provide innovative methodologies and software tools for systems toxicology modelling.

For further information about please visit: TransQST.