Back in Sweden for the 5th Annual Project Meeting at AstraZeneca in Gothenburg
After holding last year's meeting in Stockholm, the 3TR consortium returned to Sweden from 9 to 10 October 2024, this time to Gothenburg, for its 5th annual project meeting. Hosted by AstraZeneca, the event brought together our partners from industry, research, clinical sites and patient organisations to review progress made and discuss future plans for tackling chronic autoimmune, respiratory and inflammatory bowel diseases.
Day 1: Kicking Off and Evaluating Progress
The meeting opened with a warm welcome from Graham Clarke, Head of Translational Science & Experimental Medicine Operations, Early Respiratory & Immunology at AstraZeneca and Maria Belvisi, Head of Research and Early Development, Respiratory & Immunology, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. Following their introduction, 3TR coordinator Marta Alarcón Riquelme (FPS) and Project Lead Terry Means from Sanofi set the tone for the event by outlining the meeting’s goals and highlighting the importance of cross-disease collaboration. “Multidisciplinarity is key in 3TR. It’s thus important that we come together, talk to each other and learn even more from each other across the different diseases” Alarcón Riquelme underlined. Both then also took a moment to reflect on the milestones achieved in 2024, highlighting the strong partnerships that have driven advancement.
Welcome and introduction to the 5th annual 3TR meeting by Graham Clarke, Head of Translational Science & Experimental Medicine Operations, Early Respiratory & Immunology at AstraZeneca, 3TR Coordinator Marta Alarcón Riquelme (FPS) and 3TR Project Lead Terry Means from Sanofi
The plenary session then featured comprehensive updates on the progress of the project’s various work packages and disease groups. Each team shared achievements and challenges and outlined the next steps needed to push their activities forward. The afternoon concluded with a wrap-up of the day’s discussions, followed by disease-specific breakout sessions that allowed for more detailed conversations.
Day 2: Joining Forces for Better Therapies
Day two centred on round table discussions focused on the role of Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs) in future therapy development and how to better align research with patients’ perspectives and real-life experiences. Ioannis Parodis, Associate Professor of Rheumatology at the Karolinska Institute, and Graham Roberts, Professor of Paediatric Allergy and Respiratory Medicine at the University of Southampton, kicked off this session with keynote speeches on the progress of PRO measures for asthma and systemic lupus erythematosus. As a major challenge going forward, they identified sometimes conflicting perceptions of patients and clinicians. “We often see that there is a discordance between what clinical data suggests and how patients feel and experience their individual quality of life. Frankly speaking, by looking at the clinical data, the clinician might be happy, but the patient is not,” Parodis said.
3TR Coordinator Marta Alarcón Riquelme (FPS) and Peter Hecht from Sanofi present in front of more than 120 meeting participants.
Roberts agreed and also pointed out the importance of considering the patients’ perspectives: „I am a clinician; I do not have asthma. I do not know what having asthma feels like. But I am convinced we need to listen to and take the patient’s experience into account when measuring the success of our treatments.” Following these presentations, representatives from the Patient Advisory Committee (PAC) joined the conversation and shared their perspectives, personal experiences and concerns. Their contributions once again highlighted the importance of patient involvement for the consortium’s work, reaffirming the core principle: "Nothing about us without us."
The event ended with a summary of the meeting’s key points, a strategic outlook for 2025, along with the exciting announcement that the next annual meeting will take place in Barcelona!
Representatives of the Patient Advisory Committee (PAC) share their perspectives during the round table discussion on day 2 of the annual meeting.