First meeting of the Coordination Board
The first Coordination Board meeting was held on 30 January 2024. In line with our vision for the adaptive platform trials and cohort studies to “act as one” this meeting unites the Trial Coordination Board and the Cohort Coordination Board.
What is TCB?
The Trial Coordination Board (TCB), which includes a therapeutic and a vaccine pillar, gathers all key stakeholders involved in the implementation of infectious diseases adaptive platform trials, to ensure robust results and the successful integration of the trial outcomes into guidelines for clinical care. It aims to ensure collaboration and cooperation between the European infectious diseases adaptive platform trials and to create and maintain a constructive dialogue with regulatory bodies, policy makers, and global COVID-19 and infectious diseases trials. Through this dialogue, the TCB provides recommendations for the strengthening of associated trials and identifies opportunities for synergies between trials while avoiding duplication of efforts. Prior to CoMeCT, the TCB was structured as a shared work package between EU-funded projects EU-RESPONSE, RECOVER, Ecraid-Prime and VACCELERATE, as well as MPX RESPONSE and also facilitates regular exchange between other European APTs treatment trials included (but not limited to) Recovery, PRINCIPLE, PANORAMIC, STRIVE, ANTICOV and the Vx trials of the VACCELERATE consortium, COMCOV and others.
What is CCB?
The Cohort Coordination Board (CCB) is a forum that brings together cohort-based COVID-19 research projects across Europe, alongside representatives from the European Commission, EMA, ECDC and EFPIA. It aims to encourage knowledge-sharing between cohort-based research projects to facilitate partnerships, discuss similar challenges and reduce overlap between projects. During the CCB’s monthly meetings, members and external experts are invited to present new initiatives, share preliminary results and discuss common challenges. Originally managed under the auspices of the Horizon 2020 ORCHESTRA project, the CCB has since been included into the Horizon Europe VERDI and CoMeCT projects. The projects participating in the CCB include: COVICIS, SYNCHROS, ECRAID, unCoVer, END-VOC, VACCELERATE, EUCARE, VERDI, EMBL-EBI, REACT, LONG COVID, NICB, ORCHESTRA, RIVM Long COVID, CONTAGIO, NCMB.
The future of the Coordination Board
By bringing the TCB and CCB together, the Coordination Board will facilitate a structured and continued dialogue between the observational studies and adaptive platform trials to ensure that data from the cohort studies landscape can be further explored in randomised clinical trials and adaptive platform trials, and facilitate communications and exchange of these parties. It will also coordinate the clinical research endeavours to maximise European efforts while respecting each adaptive platform trial and cohort study's autonomy. Meetings of the Coordination Board also include external stakeholder representatives from policy makers, funders, regulators, and patient organisations.