MICROB-PREDICT aims to develop personalised, microbiome-based treatment strategies to prevent and treat ACLF and reduce mortality by investigating the human gut microbiome. The goal is to identify predictors and mechanisms associated with the development of decompensated cirrhosis and its progression to ACLF. The need for personalised treatment strategies becomes apparent when considering that there are substantial, yet still largely unexplained, individual differences in developing decompensated cirrhosis and ACLF. At the same time, this observation bears the chance for more effective, more individualised and more targeted treatments.
The pan-European research project will integrate microbiome results and other patient data from previous large-scale studies, such as GALAXY, LIVERHOPE and PREDICT, combining more than 200,000 data points from about 10,000 subjects. A comprehensive data base will be generated, including data from stool, blood, saliva, mucosa and urine samples over the course of the disease, allowing for a novel longitudinal analysis, thereby providing clear added value over the previous studies. MICROB-PREDICT wants to identify and validate microbiome-based individual biomarkers and predictors of a) healthy, low-risk conditions, b) decompensated cirrhosis and progression to ACLF, c) treatment response.
Center for Liver Research will lead a randomized clinical trial (ALB-TRIAL) in 8 European Centres with the goal of validating biomarker signatures that predict the therapeutic response to treatment with human albumin.
