EuroCoord workpackages (WP)

There are 15 workpackages within EuroCoord summarised below.

Click on the diagram to find out more:

Workpackage 1: Network of Excellence (NoE) Management

Lead beneficiary: UCL

The Management WP will ensure optimal scientific and infrastructure synergy over the day-to-day operations and facilitate cross-network communication. The long-term goal is to continue to guide and coordinate scientific methodologies that have previously been so successful in Europe and to ensure that new competitive science areas are encouraged and supported.

The MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL will be leading this effort in close collaboration with the UCL European Research and Development Office (ERDO) which will provide specific expertise on contractual, financial, and administrative matters as part of the project management of the network.

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Workpackage 2: Training and outreach

Lead beneficiary: PENTA

The main objectives of this WP are to improve research skills including statistical techniques to allow researchers to undertake observational research of the highest calibre, and to provide basic and updated laboratory and clinical training to aid the management of HIV-infected patients. This will be achieved through a variety of ways including: online resources, residential courses, PhD, and short term staff exchanges.

A further key task of this WP is the organisation of the annual International Workshop on HIV Observational Databases (IWHOD). The objective of this highly successful workshop is to bring together researchers from both developed and developing countries working on cohorts of patients with HIV, to present in an informal, closed-meeting format new research and allow open discussions on common issues of cohort methodology, techniques and statistics. Read more about IWHOD.

This work will build on the successes of ACTIVATE.

The WP2 working group is made up of representatives from the 4 founding networks and include members with experience of coordinating EU-funded training programmes.

The leader of the group will rotate between the WP network representatives every 15 months to fully utilise the expertise within the whole EuroCoord network.

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Workpackage 3: Scientific oversight

Lead beneficiary: UCL

The Scientific Oversight WP will serve to maintain overall coherence of EuroCoord scientific activities and will lead the overall advancement of the scientific research agenda. The Scientific Oversight WP Group (SOG) will be responsible for a centralised review of the ongoing research in each key area as well as each founding network.

With the help of specialist subgroups in specific defined areas of importance (statistical methodology, hepatitis, pharmacokinetics, and virology), the SOG will oversee progress, identify potential overlap and suggest areas of collaboration. The members of the SOG and four specialist subgroups represent a range of high-level scientific expertise.

The Scientific Coordinator will rotate between the WP network representatives every 15 months to fully utilise the expertise within the whole EuroCoord network.

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Workpackage 4: Data management

Lead beneficiary: UZH

The objective of the Data Management WP is to ensure harmonisation of data variables captured by the networks with the aim of ensuring that cross-network data mergers of specified variables can readily occur.

Additionally, the WP will coordinate cross-network data mergers for scientific projects where two or more networks have agreed to collaborate. This WP will provide an inventory (on an annual basis) of data and biological material contained within each network to the Executive Board for inclusion in the annual report.

The leader of the group will rotate between the WP network representatives every 15 months to fully utilise the expertise within the whole EuroCoord network.

Each network and each new science WP has its internal data manager structure represented within this WP. Cross-network communication will occur at least quarterly. 

www.hicdep.org

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Workpackages 5 & 6: PENTA

Lead beneficiary: PENTA 

WPs 5 & 6 are PENTA-specific. The broad aims are to:

• Assess the health and treatment of HIV-infected pregnant women and to quantify / monitor MTCT rates, risks and interventions across Europe, to address contemporary questions in HIV infection, pregnancy and MTCT that are central to clinical practice and to public health, and to improve the scientific basis for HIV prevention, diagnosis and treatment among pregnant women and their infants
• Address key clinical questions relating to the management, treatment and long-term outcomes of HIV-infected children and adolescents.
• To provide the framework within which to design, co-ordinate, conduct, manage and analyse data from clinical trials and their sub-studies addressing specific management strategy questions for HIV-infected children and young peop

 Find out more about PENTA

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Workpackages 7 & 8: CASCADE

Lead beneficiaries: UCL & INSERM 

WPs 7 & 8 are CASCADE-specific. The aims are to provide the framework within which to conduct and analyse data from HIV seroconverters by:

• Pooling and enlarging the datasets available for analyses to address pre-specified objectives and future questions arising in the lifetime of the project
• Implementing a harmonisation process for the collection of key socio-economic variables (in collaboration with WP14)
• Establishing the infrastructure and know-how to estimate HIV incidence in Central & Eastern European countries. 

The WPs also aim to characterise newly-acquired HIV infection, its contribution to the epidemic, and to assess outcome and its determinants in individuals with early diagnosis, focussing on:

• Applying techniques which distinguish recent from chronic HIV infection and testing populations
• Assessing the outcome of infected individuals following infection
• Identifying differences in disease progression
• Determining viral and host genetic factors and their relevance to outcome.

Find out more about CASCADE

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Workpackages 9 & 10 – EuroSIDA

Lead beneficiary: Region Hovedstaden (RegionH) 

WPs 9 & 10 are EuroSIDA-specific. The objectives can be broadly classified as:

• Surveillance of important outcomes across Europe
• Utilisation of surveys to study rare events using the EuroSIDA network
• Examine utilisation and outcomes of antiretroviral therapy
• Monitor the development of HIV-1 drug resistance, clinical utility of detection of minority variants and HIV tropism and response to new drugs
• Examine quality of life, ageing, and employment issues within a regional context
• Performing accurate and appropriate statistical analyses of the research questions within EuroSIDA

Further task include:

• Study coordination and data collection
• Central plasma repository
• Coinfection with hepatitis B and C infections
• Biomarkers
• Eastern Europe
• Benchmarking.

Find out more about EuroSIDA

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Workpackages 11 & 12 – COHERE

Lead beneficiaries: UB2 & RegionH

WPs 10 & 11 are COHERE-specific. The WPs aim to coordinate, administer and oversee research projects for COHERE generated by its cohorts, project and theme leads, in order to increase the knowledge on HIV clinical epidemiology that require very large observational databases.

These projects focus on:

Response to cART

Characterising history of HCV and HIV infection among co-infected patient

Epidemiology of rare or specific conditions.

Find out more about COHERE

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Workpackage 13: HIV/TB

Lead beneficiary: RegionH

The objectives of this prospective joint activity on TB and HIV coinfection are to:

• Monitor the long-term clinical prognosis and the temporal changes in the documented regional differences in clinical prognosis
• Analyse the reasons for differences in clinical prognosis, in particular: use of and efficacy of HIV and TB therapy, use of culture and resistance testing, and role of anti-TB drug resistance
• Monitor temporal changes in the factors above and the impact of these changes on the clinical prognosis
• Analyse the effect of anti-TB therapy according to the existence and patterns of anti-TB drug resistance
• Analyse the impact of delaying cART initiation on the clinical prognosis (or to assess the most optimal time for cART initiation)
• Analyse TB as an immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) and risk factors thereof
• Collect mycobacterial specimens for centralised analysis of anti-TB drug resistance (DNA finger-printing)
• Assess regional incidences of TB among HIV-patients and evaluate risk factors thereof
• Evaluate the use and impact of anti-TB prophylaxis in HIV-infected patients.

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Workpackage 14: Migrants

Lead beneficiary: ISCIII

This WP aims to prevent HIV infection, and improve diagnosis and prognosis of migrant populations living with HIV in Europe by providing evidence to support policy development at European level. It also aims to determine the likely country of HIV acquisition for migrant populations and identify barriers to HIV prevention, testing, and treatment.

Key outcomes and their determinants will be studied by geographical origin and sex:

• Appropriateness of initiation of HAART
• Virological and immunological responses to HAART
• All-cause and cause-specific mortality
• Appropriateness of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) interventions
• MTCT and pregnancy outcomes, and model the relationships between the characteristics of the European cities migrants live in

with the previous HIV-related outcomes.

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Workpackage 15: Modelling

Lead beneficiary: UCL

The broad aim of this WP is to build a stochastic computer simulation model of HIV infection and the effect of ART and to fit the model to data from European countries in order to estimate the status of HIV infected populations across Europe, in terms of diagnosis, treatment usage, resistance, pregnancy, and rates of AIDS and death.

A European HIV Estimates Working Group will be established with the following aims:

• To develop a new stochastic computer simulation model that can be used for the purpose of reconstructing and projecting the status of HIV infected individuals in a given country
• To work with epidemiologists and those responsible for public health in each European country to produce consensus estimates based on the model, which will include the following:
  
• Number of people with diagnosed/undiagnosed HIV
• Number of people with undiagnosed HIV and CD4 count <200, <350
• Number of people on ART (according to whether viral load is currently <500 or not)
• Number of people on ART who have resistance to NNRTI (efavirenz/nevirapine), according to whether they have viral load <500 or not. Also for the PI, NRTI, entry inhibitor and integrase classes
• Number of people who have triple class resistance (according to whether have VL < 500 or not)
• Number of infected women becoming pregnant. 

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