Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a major public health problem accounting for ~20% of all deaths in Europe with an estimated yearly incidence of ~350-700,000, often in patients with previous myocardial infarction (MI). In SCD, the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. If untreated, the patient dies within minutes, but SCD can be successfully prevented by an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). The ICD is highly effective, but is associated with potentially severe complications and high healthcare costs. Based on historical evidence, guidelines recommend prophylactic ICD implantation in post-MI patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF)≤35% to prevent SCD. However, only a minority of these patients will ever need the device. In addition, in absolute numbers the majority of SCD cases occurs in patients with LVEF>35% who are currently not considered for prophylactic ICD. Due to the inherent risks and considerable health care expenditures, a personalised treatment approach for ICD implantation is urgently required. Using state-of-the-art methods and large clinical datasets from established international cohorts and registries across different European geographies, PROFID will develop a clinical decision support tool (risk score) to predict the individual SCD risk and identify those post-MI patients that will optimally benefit from an ICD. Two parallel randomised clinical trials will validate implementation of the risk score to determine ICD implantation, while health economic analyses will assess its economic impact on health care systems. A software tool for clinical use of the risk score will be implemented, and a pilot run in 3 European regions with participation of insurance companies and authorities. The unique composition of the consortium with key opinion leaders, patient organisations, large hospital chains, payers, policy makers and state authorities across Europe, will ensure implementation into routine clinical practice.

Ventricular tachycardia (VT) is an unpredictable and potentially deadly condition and should be promptly treated with catheter ablation and medication, before irreversible and potentially fatal organ damage follows. Unfortunately, this combination of treatments does not prevent VT reoccurrence in 30-50% of VT patients and while they can undergo multiple invasive ablations, technical difficulties or refusal of the patient can lead to a lack of effective treatment options. A promising novel, non-invasive treatment option for VT is stereotactic arrhythmia radioablation (STAR). Besides being non-invasive, STAR can also be used to reach locations that are inaccessible for catheter ablation, which may potentially improve effectiveness of overall VT treatment. Small scale first in men/early phase trials have been performed for STAR, providing proof-of-concept for clinical safety and efficacy. However, patients with recurrent VT are not a homogenous group and each center deals with different inclusion criteria, imaging and/or target definition. Many questions remain and the available studies lack the power to clinically validate the approach and prepare for late stage phase III trials. The STOPSTORM consortium sets out to consolidate all current and future European efforts to clinically validate STAR treatment by merging all data in a validation cohort study, standardising pre-treatment and follow-up, in order to collect the data sets and statistical power needed to unanimously establish clinical safety, efficacy and benefit for STAR. The STOPSTORM consortium also sets out to refine protocols and guidelines, determine volumes of interest, define and model the optimal target region and target dose, also in relation to surrounding healthy tissues (i.e. organs at risk) and determine which patient population and underlying cardiopathies respond best to STAR. By doing so the STOPSTORM consortium paves the way to consensus and future late stage clinical trials for STAR.

Herpesviruses are widely spread, and cause life-long infections. Most individuals carry multiple herpesviruses, which can cause severe diseases, especially in children, immunocompromised individuals, and elderly. There are currently no safe vaccines against herpesvirus infections and current treatments are not satisfactory. With new insights into the molecular basis for diseases caused by immunodeficiency, and with the increasing numbers of elderly in Europe, there is now an unmet demand for improved treatments of herpesvirus infections. Combined with the progress in basic herpesvirus research, this calls for education of a new generation of scientists with strong research skills, advanced insights into disease mechanisms, and understanding of how industry brings innovative research into the market. In this application we propose an interactive education program for early stage researchers (ESR) in leading European laboratories, hospitals, and biotech companies. The focus will be on the virology and immunology of herpesvirus infections in the context of basic research as well as application of research-acquired knowledge. Our program will prepare the ESRs to manage goal-oriented interactions between academia, the clinics, and the biotech industry. The ESRs will acquire broad theoretical and methodological expertises involving several sectors to obtain the skills required for overcoming the cultural gaps From Bench to Bedside and From Discovery to Innovation. This can only be achieved through a network-based approach. We propose to develop a platform to educate the next generation of scientists to solve the outstanding problems in prevention and treatment of herpesvirus infections. The ESRs will be ideally trained to translate cutting-edge discoveries to novel products and to innovative treatment serving the European people, and hence to improve handling of present and emerging health challenges, as well as to foster the European biopharmaceutical industry sector.