International Collaborative Asthma Network 2022

Thank you to those who attended the ICAN 2022 Meeting.

This focus of this meeting was to promote innovation and to strengthen international collaborations on asthma in general and severe asthma in particular.  There is a heightened need in the space beyond the T2 asthma phenotype. This meeting was a junior investigators research forum and focused on international collaboration in the following 5 areas:  1) Establishing an international entity to foster future meetings, data sharing, and innovative asthma research 2) Validating innovative disease mechanisms hypotheses, 3) Developing new technologies and therapies, 4) Organizing pilot studies of personalized severe asthma treatments, and 5) Engaging young investigators.

Abstracts submissions were solicited and were scored and selected based on the following criteria:

1. Novelty of the idea, preferably independent of targets and pathways currently funded by major industrial partners in drug development and extending beyond T2 mechanisms (20 points).
2. Proposed or already applied use of collaborative data analysis across different international asthma networks (20 points).
3. “Shovel-ready” programming approach to integrated application of big data networks for use in understanding asthma (10 points).
4. Strength of the preliminary data (note that the ICAN abstract can expand upon, but not duplicate, data being presented at the 2022 ATS) (15 points).
5. IP and potential translational relevance to personalized diagnosis or treatment (20 points).
6. Potential for creating a reduction in the burden of asthma (15 points).
7. Additionally, we will evaluate whether the abstract is related to one of the priorities in Table 1 of the asthma research prioritization exercise (please name which one)

Thirty-six abstracts were selected for presentation on their innovative ideas in the beyond T2 asthma space which are supported by preliminary data or analysis and have potential for using international collaborative platforms. Abstracts and attendees began the event in categorized groups according to project topic, but throughout the event, were pushed to ‘cross-pollinate’ across groups so as to explore new, innovative collaborations.

The ICAN did not permit the presenters to present the same abstracts as those submitted to ATS, but rather abstracts which are ‘next steps’ or refer to ATS abstracts.

The meeting was a great success, providing time and space for investigators from around the globe to present their work and then discuss their data and next steps for their projects. The meeting was completed with guest speakers in the fields of legal processes, entrepreneurship and big data and informatics.

Allergy and Asthma Network is supporting the preparation of a manuscript about this meeting.

This meeting was made possible by an NHLBI R13 award and the support and efforts of Allergy and Asthma Network, as well as the support of AstraZeneca and Zephrx. The ICAN Organizing Committee is working on plans for the second ICAN meeting anticipated to take place in 2023.