Combining optoacoustic imaging phenotypes and multi-omics to advance diabetes healthcare

Diabetes has emerged as a global pandemic affecting more than 420 million people worldwide, a number expected to further rise in the next decades.

The disease has very heterogeneous outcomes and accurate patient staging or prediction of subsets of individuals likely to develop disease and/or progress to disease complications are currently unmet clinical challenges in need of urgent attention.

OPTOMICS aims to research methodology that can deliver a paradigm shift in type 2 diabetes healthcare, by integrating 1) molecular phenotyping, 2) a new generation of phenotypic measurements in humans, representative of diabetes onset and progression, allowed by novel portable and non-invasive optoacoustic technology and 3) cutting-edge computational approaches leveraging progress in Artificial Intelligence.

This research will develop and validate a digital twin model that catalyses a step change in shortening the path to translation, enabling applications in the entire spectrum from target identification & prevention/prognosis to patient stratification for type 2 diabetes and its complications.

In addition to the research and technology goals, OPTOMICS places special attention to the ethical needs and implications of the work performed and further aims at exemplary project management, human measurements, dissemination and communication activities and updating an adept exploitation plan for the digital twin developed.