Qualified biomarkers help to optimize drug development and patient safety, yet for the regulatory acceptance of safety biomarkers substantial sample sizes are needed to ensure adequate case and control numbers, and robust evidence sufficient for qualification. To address this challenge, a consortium of leading European research institutions and SMEs has been established. The consortium will generate exploratory and confirmatory data enabling regulatory qualification of new safety biomarkers for application in drug development; establish robust datasets on the DILI, DIKI, DIPI, DIVI and DINI biomarkers to enhance diagnosis of disease; develop and validate assays for new safety biomarkers; implement profiles of circulating miRNAs as tissue and mechanism specific diagnostic tool; have key safety biomarkers accepted as qualified drug development tools by EMA, FDA, and PMDA. Given the significant expertise available across the consortium, the group will be able to tackle the key challenges related to successful biomarker qualification. A key driving principle of the consortium is cross-linking via existing networks of top profile research institutions, as well as capitalizing on existing data and resources. The Consortium is embedded into a network of international research collaborations such as the Pro-Euro-DILI-registry, TransQST, eTRANSAFE, the i2b2 tranSMART Foundation, the CIOMS DILI working group, EPoS, LITMUS, and BBMRI. To optimize regulatory interaction, we intend to continue our successful collaboration with non-European consortia such as PSTC, the FNIH Biomarkers Consortium, and US DILIN. A key expected result of the consortium will be a “Safety Biomarker Factory”, regularly qualifying new markers, with an associated “Safety Biomarker Warehouse”, providing to the scientific community, industry, and patients detailed data and information, and knowledge across a large spectrum of advanced safety biomarkers.

Measuring and quantifying how a patient feels or functions during treatment is an important endpoint in cancer clinical trials. It is generally accepted that the collection of PRO data in cancer clinical trials allows the inclusion of the patient’s voice in the risk-benefit assessment of therapies. However, no standards exist on how to analyse, interpret or report health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and other patient-reported outcomes (PROs). This initiative wants to pursue efforts in addressing the urgent need for standardization, by setting clear and validated standards that are tailored to and endorsed by all relevant stakeholders. With a strong international and multi-stakeholder Consortium, the initiative aims at finding consensus on suitable methods to analyse valid PRO objectives in cancer randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and ways to communicate these PRO findings in a standardized way that is understandable to all. To achieve this aim, SISAQOL-IMI will identify valid PRO research objectives and match these with appropriate statistical methods for PRO analysis in cancer RCTs. Translation to the estimands framework will be provided. Furthermore, the possibility of extending these recommendations to single-arm trial designs will be explored. Recommendations on clinically meaningful change for PRO instruments, as well as design considerations and ways for assessing quality of collected PRO data will be developed, and tools and templates for presentation and visualization of PRO findings freely made available. Strong emphasis is put on continuous collaboration with patient advocacy representatives throughout the project. Increased interpretability, adoption and full use of PRO outcomes for all stakeholders is expected by providing consensus-based and validated recommendations and communication tools for PRO data, ultimately resulting in better communication and shared decision making, improved outcomes, treatment satisfaction and care.