LinkedIn
Advancing Personalised Prevention
and Early Intervention for Chronic
Inflammatory Diseases
Group of people and intestine

UNIGE - Université de Genève

Founded in 1559, the University of Geneva (UNIGE) is currently ranked among the top 100 universities in the world. A versatile institution with international influence, it is fully integrated into the international Geneva community while contributing to the cultural, social, and economic development of the region. UNIGE is a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and the 4EU+ European alliance, and the quality of its research is internationally recognized. It is honored by numerous distinctions, including several Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals. UNIGE hosts nearly 18,000 students from 150 countries across its nine faculties and thirteen interdisciplinary centers.

Role within PerPrev-CID

The University of Geneva (UNIGE) will play a central role in the production and analysis of multimodal clinical and omics data from an established multicentric observational cohort of individuals at risk of developing RA (Screen-RA cohort, http://www.arthritis-checkup.ch/). In collaboration with other partners, UNIGE will participate in assembling a shared data lake for the comparative longitudinal analysis of clinical and omics data from at-risk RA and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) cohorts to identify predictive multimodal biomarkers.

Furthermore, UNIGE will be involved in the design and validation of a multidimensional decision support tool for the at-risk RA population. Another key task will be to work closely with partners to establish a standardization framework, including developing guidelines for future healthcare implementation, and contributing to the Sample and Omics Hub for data production and joint analysis. These efforts will be supported by close collaboration with the Health2030 Genome Center in Geneva (https://www.health2030genome.ch/) part of the Swiss-Multi-Omics Center (SMOC).

Additionally, UNIGE will play a pivotal role in recruiting and monitoring RA patients for the multicenter prospective FLARE study, which aims to predict early flare risks using high-density home-based sampling. UNIGE will also contribute to a randomized placebo-controlled nutrition-based intervention trial in RA.

Main contacts

Photo of Axel Finckh

Axel Finckh
Professor, rheumatologist clinician and epidemiologist - Team Leader

Photo of Celine Lamacchia

Celine Lamacchia
PhD, biologist/study coordinator - Team Member

Photo of Ioannis Xenarios

Ioannis Xenarios
Professor, computational biologist/immunologist - Team Member

Photo of Ilya Kolpakov

Ilya Kolpakov
PhD, data scientist/data engineer - Team Member

Photo of Olivia Studer

Olivia Studer
Study nurse - Team Member