Section: Highlights of the Year

Highlights of the Year

• Axis “High Dimensional Statistical Learning” (coordinator Boris Hejblum)

• Axis “Mechanistic Learning” (coordinator Mélanie Prague)

• Axis “Translational Vaccinology” (coordinator Laura Richert)

  The third research axis on "Translational vaccinology" was created in order to formalize research activities already performed previously in a less structure way. This axis is dedicated to applied research questions in early stage clinical vaccine trials, with two objectives:

  • to elucidate the potential effects and mechanisms of action of vaccines and immunotherapies in integrative statistical analyses of the induced responses at various levels of the immune system

  • to better inform future trial designs and statistical analysis methods by means of modelling and methodological developments.

The three axes collaborate closely with each other.

In fact, the third axis gives the motivating examples leading to the methodological work done in the two other axes. The first axis deals with the raw high-dimensional data generated in clinical epidemiology or biological studies and aims at reducing the dimension of the problem or better annotate the data available (e.g. automatic gating of cytometry data). The second axis aims at building mechanistic model to understand and predict the biological phenomenons by using the available information. The idea then is that the results of this modelling part feed the third axis to define the next strategies to be evaluated in clinical studies and the design of these studies.

• Launch of the Graduate's School Digital Public Health (PI: R Thiébaut) including the Master of Public Health Data Sciences that started with its first cohort of 9 international students in Sep 2019.

• Positive response for funding of the H2020 IP-Cure-B project (Immune profiling to guide host-directed interventions to cure hepatitis B infections, project coordinator: Pr. F. Zoulim, Inserm U1052 CRCL), in which the work package “Data Science” is led by the SISTM team. The project will be launched in January 2020.

• Kick-off of the EDTCP-2 funded project PREVAC-UP (partnership for research on Ebola vaccinations – extended follow-up and clinical research capacity build-up, project coordinator: Pr Y. Yazdanpanah, Inserm), in which the work package “Systems vaccinology” is led by the SISTM team.

• A new collaboration has started with the pharmaceutical company Ipsen on the integration of “omics” data into in-silico modelling of early-stage clinical trials in cancer. This project will be conducted with a “CIFRE” (Conventions Industrielles de Formation par la REcherche) PhD contract starting in January 2020.

• Action de Développement technologique VASI: Visualization and Analytics Solution for Immunologists.

• The Ebovac2 IMI project on Ebola vaccine development has been extended to 11/2020 (no cost extension).

• Associate Team DYNAMHIC: Dynamical Modeling of HIV Cure in Collaboration With Harvard Program for evolutionary dynamics.

• A translational phase I clinical trial of an experimental placental malaria vaccine, conducted by an interdisciplinary consortium including members of the SISTM team (Primalvac trial), has reached its publication, with a manuscript accepted for publication in the Lancet Infectious Diseases

• Two HIV clinical vaccine trials have reached their final stage with all resultats available, including integrative data analyses of the immune responses, and the corresponding manuscripts are in preparation (ANRS VRI01 trial and ANRS 149 Light trial).

• The two phase II Ebola vaccine trials conducted by the IMI-2 EBOVAC2 consortium that is coordinated by Rodolphe Thiébaut are terminated. Results have been presented at international conferences and the manuscripts with the primary results are either submitted (EBL2001 study, submitted to the Lancet) or in preparation (EBL2002 study). Systems vaccinology analyses of the data from these trials are ongoing in the SISTM team.

• Robin Genuer co-authored a book with Jean-Michel Poggi on random forests entitled Les forêts aléatoires avec R in Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes, France.

• Award for Doctoral Supervision and Research Activity (PEDR) attributed by the University of Bordeaux to Marta Avalos and Robin Genuer