WP1

Extending DisCoVeRy in Europe

  • Expand, organize and conduct the DisCoVeRy clinical trial in EU member states and associated countries.
  • Ensure compliance of ethical and regulatory aspects.
  • Provide answers on the safety and efficacy of the repurposed medicines and investigational drugs.
  • Build the foundation of a proactive European network dedicated to emerging infectious diseases.

WP2

DisCoVeRy for Solidarity: a platform trial for COVID-19 and other emerging infectious diseases

  • Build a multinational, European Adaptive Platform Trial used for future clinical trials targeting COVID-19 in short-term and other emerging infectious diseases in the medium/long-term.
  • Build a strong trial governance accounting for all stakeholders.
  • Define the statistical strategies to guard the scientific integrity of provided evidence.
  • Initiate and manage a first trial.

WP3

Coordination of the European COVID-19 Adaptive Platform trials

  • Optimal cooperation and coordination between the European Adaptive Platform Trials, through a dialogue with relevant stakeholders providing high-level specifications for their planning and design.
  • Building a bridge between RECOVER and EU-RESPONSE.
  • Development of a toolbox facilitating the design and development of Adaptive Platform Trials, ensuring cross-fertilization and dissemination across medical specialties.

WP4

Project management, coordination, communication and dissemination

  • Provide efficient management and administration of the project, while fulfilling all legal, regulatory, and ethical requirements.
  • Establish a functional management structure.
  • Dissemination and communication.
  • Develop the exploitation plan and sustainability plan.

Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL)

Opened in 1976, after the meeting of the newly built Municipal Hospital (today CHL Center), the Grand Duchess Charlotte Maternity (now CHL Maternity) dating from 1936, and the Pediatric Clinic (today CHL Kannerklinik) from 1966, joined in 2004 by the Eich Clinic (CHL Eich), the CHL today has a capacity of 579 beds and employs 2,348 people active in more than 50 trades.

The CHL is the only hospital centre where doctors work as full-time employees at the hospital. Many of the CHL's services are recognized by universities in neighbouring countries as training and training grounds for future doctors, pharmacists and biologists. More than 1,450 doctors in the process of specialization have passed since 1976 to the CHL for all or part of their training. In 2018, 170,272 people used CHL services. 41,191 passages were recorded in our adult emergencies. Pediatric emergencies were requested during 43,493 visits. This influx could be managed in collaboration with the on-site pediatric medical center managed by the Luxembourg Pediatric Society.

The CHL is divided into 13 departments and 41 clinical services managed jointly by a doctor and a caregiver. This new organizational model allows for accountability and efficient collaboration between all stakeholders, as well as monitoring activities in a more formal and objective manner. 

The national infectious disease service is located on the CHL Center site. It includes medical and nursing consultations for outpatients or inpatients, a care unit and the microbiology laboratory. It works in close collaboration with the retrovirology laboratory, the Infection Prevention Unit (UPI), collaborates with the Health Department, and has missions of national and international interest.  

 

Arbeitsgemeinschaft Medikamentose Tumortherapie Gemeinnutzige (AGMT)

The AGMT (Austrian Group Medical Tumor Therapy, non-profit GmbH) is an association of active clinicians and researchers from the fields of oncology, haematology and other disciplines with the aim of improving the treatment results of patients through clinical studies, researching modern therapeutic methods and promoting clinical and scientific education and training. 

As part of its charitable targets the AGMT is undertaking research work through internationally recognised research in accordance with the standard of ICH-GCP (AMG-compliant) and in accordance with other statutory framework conditions, as well as participating actively in national and international research programmes on the prevention and cures of several types of diseases and providing information to the general public by publishing the results of the research work.  

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm)

Founded in 1964, the INSERM (French national institute of health and medical research, www.inserm.fr) is a public scientific and technological institute that operates under the joint authority of the French Ministries of Health and Research. Its mission is to facilitate the exchange between basic, clinical, therapeutic and public health research leveraging on its scientific expertise in several fields and covering a very large spectrum of human diseases. 

 

Assistant Public Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP)

Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) is the biggest teaching hospital in Europe, federating 39 different hospitals and groups of hospitals (22,474 beds) mainly located in Paris and its suburban area. It offers advanced treatments to 8M patients per year, including 1.5M hospitalizations (10% of all hospitalizations in France). It is also the largest employer in the Paris region with 92,000 people working for this public institution representing more than 150 different jobs.

With more than 19,000 medical staff, 3000 hospital physicians, including 1000 professors and more than 6000 residents and medical students, AP-HP's staff cover all the major medical specialities. 

As a public health institution, AP-HP pursues 3 main missions: healthcare delivery, medical and paramedical teaching and biomedical and clinical research. AP-HP' teams develop high quality research activities, including European and International Research projects. In particular, AP-HP is involved and/or co-ordinates more than 80 European research projects supported by the Research and Technological Development Research Programme from the European Union. AP-HP is also the first biomedical research center in Europe with > 500 clinical trials per year and > 8,000 publications per year (25% of all medical research publications in France). It represents the leading sponsor of clinical trials in France and Europe. The Clinical Research and Innovation Delegation (DRCI) is responsible for managing and monitoring all research and the resources needed to achieve them, in line with good clinical practice and patient safety.  

Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL)

Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL) is the second-largest University Hospital Network in France that puts together 14 multidisciplinary or specialised establishments and provides a various range of services and expertise in all medical and surgical disciplines. HCL are ranked amongst the 25 best hospitals in the world.

The HCL represents 23,000 professionals, of which more than 5,000 are doctors and over 900,000 consultations. For over 200 years, as a network providing expertise in all disciplines – both medical and surgical – HCL have offered a wide range of human, technical and logistical resources to ensure that they provide care, training, research, medical innovation as well as disease prevention and health education.  

Servicio Madrileno de Salud (SERMAS)

SERMAS constitutes the Public Health System for the Madrid Autonomous Region, Spain. Along with its clinical facilities, like La Paz University Hospital–HULP, also holds several research institutes such as the Hospital La Paz Institute for Health Research–IdiPAZ. 

HULP is the flagship general tertiary hospital in the Madrid Autonomous Region, serving to an area in excess of 500000 people.

As the first modern-concept hospital built in Spain it has kept its prestige over the years, being recognised as the best-valued among public-owned hospital through the years. It is noteworthy its position as main reference in Spain for handling emergent infective threats, being the only hospital in Europe that successfully treat both COVID-19, Ebola an Crimea-Congo fever. IdiPAZ institute concentrates the clinical, translational and experimental research of the La Paz University Hospital. The institute harbours 55 research groups distributed in six main research areas: neurosciences; cardiovascular; infectious diseases and immunity; organ system pathologies; cancer and human molecular genetics; and surgery, transplant and health technologies. And a series of common core platforms (Clinical Trials, Molecular Medicine, 3D printing etc.) aimed to ensure the synergies among the research groups and with the hospital wards.  

European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN)

The European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN, www.ecrin.org) is a sustainable, not-for-profit, distributed infrastructure with the legal status of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).

ECRIN provides support for the planning and implementation of multinational clinical research projects in Europe. ECRIN currently has nine Member Countries (France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic and Norway) and three Observer Countries (Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland), covering 80% of EU population.

ECRIN provides services for the management of multinational investigators-initiated and SME-sponsored trials; central services (data management, central vigilance) and distributed services provided by the ECRIN partner in each country involved (regulatory and ethical submissions and follow-up, monitoring, local vigilance, etc.). As part of its trial support activities, ECRIN develops and maintains freely accessible tools such as databases on regulatory and ethical requirements, outcome measures, risk-based monitoring tools, as well as the certification of data centres.

ECRIN contributes and coordinates infrastructure development projects aiming to establish new and joint services for biomedical research. These projects span several research areas such as: sharing and secondary use of health data in the context of the EOSC (EOSC-Life; EOSC-Hub); methods and cooperation in personalized medicine (PERMIT, EULAC-PerMed); management of paediatric clinical trials (PedCRIN); developing a European network for clinical infectious disease research (ECRAID-Plan); developing tools for the establishment and management of platform trials (EU-PEARL).  

Ethniko Kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinion (NKUA)

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is the largest state institution of higher learning in Greece, and among the largest universities in Europe.

As all other Greek universities, it is a self-governed legal entity of public law and all major policy issues are determined by the Ministry of National Education and Religion. Retaining its academic autonomy, it fully respects the constitutionally secured right to everyone for a free education. This is possible because it is funded by the state. Moreover, it is progressively succeeding to benefit from its property and legacies, as well as from the funding of research projects with national and international partners. All funds are invested into the management and operation of educational, research and cultural programmes, into student and staff services and grants.

With a student body of about 125000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, over 2000 members of academic staff and approximately 1300 administrative and secretarial staff and specialised personnel, the University of Athens aims at excellence in both teaching and research in a significantly varied range of disciplines  

Folkehelseinstituttet (NIPH)

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health is a government agency under the Ministry of Health and Care Services.  NIPH is as well involved in international collaboration in health in several areas and research both at national and international level constitute an important part of the activity in the institute. NIPH is the Norwegian partner in the Clinical Research Initiative for Global Health (CRIGH) to facilitate international collaboration in clinical trials with secretariat at the ECRIN office in Paris. 

Universytet Medyczny w Lodzi (MUL)

Medical University of Lodz, one of the leading medical university in Poland, employs 1,00 teaching and research staff, including 170 full professors, 190 assistant and associate professors and nearly 900 PhD academics.

Currently about 9.500 Polish students follow courses in 16 medical and medicine-related disciplines. Clinical Trial Unit, university-wide unit acts as the Academic Research Organization (ARO) and provides comprehensive, academically oriented planning, coordination, and management of single or multicenter clinical trials. 

Department of Infectious Diseases and Hepatology Medical University of Lodz offers significant experience in the treatment of infectious diseases and liver diseases and wide practical skills in conducting scientific activities in this area, including many clinical safety and efficacy studies of innovative therapies.  

Oslo Universitetssykehus HF (OUH)

Oslo University Hospital is a highly specialised hospital in charge of extensive regional and local hospital assignments and the provision of high quality services for the citizens of Oslo. The hospital also has a nationwide responsibility for a number of national and multi-regional assignments and has several national centres of competence. 

Division of Critical Care and Emergencies as well as Section of Clinical Immunology and Infectious Diseases are involved in all research activities related to COVID-19 infected patients and serve also as national leading units organizing and running the NOR-SOLIDARITY trial. Both departments are strongly involved in different international collaboration and in Nordic collaboration through the Scandinavian Society of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care (SSAI) and Nordic Trial Alliance (NTA). Furthermore, both departments have huge interest in developing a strong collaborating research network combing infectious diseases and intensive care medicine.  

Universita degli studi di Verona (UNIVR)

The University of Verona is a public University focusing on innovation and research, internationally renowned in the area of biomedical and infectious diseases research.

The University Hospital is 1,600-bed medical center including all medical specialties. The Infectious Diseases Section, within the Dept. of Diagnostics and Public Health, has extensive clinical and research activities with a multidisciplinary team involving > 80 members with different specialities (infectious diseases, internal medicine, microbiology, biology, statistic, bio-statistic, infection control, psychologist) coordinating and participating to several national and international projects funded by a range of different donor programmes (e.g. WHO, GARDP, IMI, Horizon2020, JPI-AMR, AIFA, and ESCMID). 

Research topics include therapy of severe bacterial infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria, prevention of healthcare associated infections, optimization of surveillance systems, antibiotic stewardship, diagnostic stewardship, AMR transmission and burden, STIs and Public Health.  

Inserm Transfert SA (IT)

Founded in 2000, Inserm Transfert is the private subsidiary of the French National Institute of the Health and Medical Research (INSERM), dedicated to technology transfer (ie from invention disclosure to industrial partnership). Inserm Transfert runs a comprehensive set of technology transfer activities from classical value chain activities to unique solutions: 

• Scouting & Intellectual property management, with a philosophy of giving a chance to all innovations (portfolio of 1673 patent families in 2017)

 • Early development & Proof-of concept support for therapeutics and diagnostics (biomarkers), with a philosophy of maximum consolidation of the earliest phases, with more than 15 M€ since 2009 with the objective to create value. IT runs €2 million proof-of-concept fund per year. In 2017, 281 projects were detected and about 400 contracts and licences were signed.

 • Setting up public multi-private partnerships on cohorts, databases, biobanks & public health management Its Collaborative Research Funding department of IT (formerly named European Affairs Department) supports the set-up and management of large-scale projects in biomedical research notably including infectious diseases, epidemiology and public health.  

Univerzita Pavla Josefa Safarika v Kosiciack (UPJS)

UPJS was founded in 1959 as the second oldest and the second classical university in Slovakia.

The UPJS is a public HEI and it consists of five faculties: Medicine, Science, Law, Public Administration, and Arts. University has a proven track record in developing and delivering innovative collaborative education programmes including PhD programmes for scientists and clinicians, as well as the delivery of professional development courses for academic researchers and industry professionals. 

The Faculty of Medicine of UPJS in Kosice began teaching medical students in September 1948, and since then it has educated over 12,000 in their prospective profession. Since 1992, it has enabled international students to complete their medical studies in English. The Faculty of Medicine consists of approximately 70 units - institutes, departments, scientific research and experimental workplaces. Research department SLOVACRIN, national node of ECRIN for Slovakia, has been established at MF UPJS in 2018 by the Ministry of Health, once Slovakia became the member-observer at ECRIN.  

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Founded in 1834, Université libre de Bruxelles (http://www.ulb.be) has a long tradition of excellence in Research with four scientific Nobel Prizes, two Nobel Peace Prizes, one Fields Medal, three Wolf Prizes and two Marie Curie Excellence Awards. It is one of the largest and best Research Universities in Belgium, with a student population of 30,000 and with almost 2,000 PhD in progress distributed among 22 Doctoral schools.

ULB has considerable experience with European funding programmes, being involved in around 270 projects financed by both the 7th European Framework Programme and Horizon 2020.

 The clinic of infectious diseases team is very active in clinical research, both academic and that supported by Industry, concerning the treatment of infectious diseases. The team is particularly active in research in the domain of treating emerging or difficult-to-treat infections, such as multi-resistant bacteria, invasive fungal infections, respiratory viral infections or infections in immune-compromised patients.  

Szegedi Tudomanyegyetem (USZ)

The University of Szeged is a large research university in Hungary. It is located in Hungary's third-largest city, Szeged, in Csongrád County in the Southern Great Plain.

The University is one of Hungary's most important universities and is among the most prominent higher education institutions in Central Europe.

 The Clinical Research Coordination Office (CRCO) is responsible for clinical studies at the University of Szeged and participates in various kinds of medical research projects. It takes part in more than 100 new, sponsored clinical trials yearly and also helps the University in conducting investigator initiated studies by coordination and management support.  

University College Cork (UCC)

University College Cork (UCC) is an internationally competitive, research-led university that plays a key role in the development of Ireland’s knowledge-based economy. Our institutional research strategy focuses on creating and supporting world-leading clusters of researchers, building on the research strengths of the University, and is aligned with key Irish & European strategies and with detailed performance targets for research and economic development we seek to position UCC and Ireland as an international innovation development hub. 

The HRB-Clinical Research Facility-Cork (CRF-C) provides dedicated infrastructure and experienced research staff critical for the successful conduct of regulated and complex patient-focused research.

The CRF-C supports a distributed network of offices in direct proximity to patient care areas as well as central offices for study coordination management and the provision of sponsor services. The CRF-C works under a rigorous quality system that meets international standards and has successfully undergone competent authority systems and project level inspections.  

Swiss Clinical Trial Organisation (SCTO)

The SCTO is the central cooperation platform for patient-oriented clinical research in Switzerland promoting a high-quality and nationally harmonised study culture. The SCTO is a joint initiative of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) and since 2013 an independent association.

There are seven hospitals in Switzerland with centres for clinical research coordinated by the SCTO. These Clinical Trial Units (CTUs) are located in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, St. Gallen and Bellinzona. The SCTO enhances the cooperation between these centres for clinical research, recognised as a clinical research infrastructure of national relevance, being co-funded by the State Secretariat of Education, Research and Innovation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Hacettepe Universitesi (HU)

Hacettepe University is one of the pioneering universities in the field of medicine in Turkey. Hacettepe University Medical Faculty is deemed to be a centre of excellence in various medical areas. It works with cutting edge technology and specialized in clinical research. Turkish Ministry of Health declared Hacettepe University Adult Hospital as pandemic hospital for COVID-19 patients.  

Centro Hospitalar de Sao Joao EPE (CHUJS)

The University Hospital Center of São Joao (in Portuguese, Centro Hospitalar Universitário São João, abbreviated CHUSJ) is composed of two hospitals, the biggest one called Hospital São João, with a total of around 1100 beds. It is the main hospital of the city of Porto and of the Porto metropolitan area and of the North of Portugal. It possesses all medical specialties. It is also a Medical School – the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. 

The Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) Service of CHUSJ is the biggest ICM Service in the country, with 66 beds, reference center for ECMO, and reference also for the education of young doctors in training for ICM specialty. It treats around 3000 patients and publishes 15-20 papers per year. 

The Infectious Disease (ID) Service of CHUSJ has ward level and ICU beds, day hospital and outpatient consult and is the main ID Service for the North of Portugal.