On December 5, 2019, the VISICORT consortium under the leadership of Prof Matthew Griffin at the National University of Ireland Galway met for its final plenary meeting. In Amsterdam for convenience, the partners assembled to share research updates and the progress of the cell manufacturing and clinical trial and to federate its Memorandum of Understanding to exploit VISICORT results and the consortium’s shared expertise into the future. The VISICORT Memorandum of Understanding is an agreement to establish the terms of interaction, use and responsibility of a Virtual Research Community, and to cement our willingness to work together as possibilities arise in the future.
Our meeting in Amsterdam provided an excellent opportunity to review progress in tracking the clinical outcomes of low and high risk corneal transplant recipients who have participated in the VISICORT longitudinal follow-up study over the past 4 years in Aarhus, Dublin, Berlin, Bristol and Nantes. Linked to the large amount of immune profiling data that has been generated by our laboratory research partners in Edinburgh and Nantes for these same patients with support from the VISICORT Foundation Biobank at Biostor Ireland Ltd., these clinical outcomes will now allow us to explore the immunological signals of rejection and other complications of corneal transplantation in a unique manner. The meeting also provided a forum for discussing new and future projects that will leverage the VISICORT clinical and biological resources and for reviewing progress toward cell manufacture for the VISICORT clinical trial of mesenchymal stromal cells in high risk corneal transplant recipients.
VISICORT coordinator, Prof. Matthew Griffin of the National University of Ireland’s Regenerative Medicine Institute.
VISICORT has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 602470. The material presented and views expressed here are the responsibility of the author(s) only. The EU Commission takes no responsibility for any use made of the information set out.