Public Workshop 1 – Conclusions

MIATA consensus workshop March 19, 2010

Info

Dear MIATA core team members and invited panelists:





We would like to thank all of you for your support in shaping the MIATA project. We would like to provide a summary of conclusions from the recent workshop in Washington on March 19, in which many of you participated.





The MIATA project aims to establish a reporting framework for immune monitoring results from T cell assays. Such a framework was originally sought to support two goals: 1) an immediate goal to provide a reporting structure for scientific publications to achieve consistency, ensure that relevant information is not missed, and allow objective evaluation of data presented; and 2) a long-term goal to provide detailed annotations for immune monitoring results to systemically fill an appropriate database for data mining.





Based on workshop proceedings, it has become clear that both goals cannot be achieved with the same framework.





It was therefore proposed to proceed with the MIATA concept in a two-step approach:















  • Focus on the establishment of a minimal information reporting framework for human T cell immune monitoring methods in scientific publications. This would not cover animal experiments.
  • Based on its successful implementation and substantiated feasibility and usefulness for scientific publications, adapt the reporting framework for annotations of immune monitoring data sets from human studies for a central database, possibly in the context of a Human Immunity Project [1]. This may include structured database vocabulary. While step 1 can be achieved through interaction with and feedback from the immune monitoring community and important stakeholders, it will require a major systematic effort and significant funding to execute step 2.














The current goal is to update the initially proposed MIATA modules (=version 0) through a continuous consensus discussion (via the Web site, workshop, and future conference calls). The updated modules (version 1) will need to be vetted further for a final framework set to achieve goal 1.





Per agreement from our workshop, a summary of the discussion of module 1 and 2 will be provided next. Subsequently, the discussion of modules 3-5 will take place via three teleconferences of the MIATA workshop panel. These will be announced shortly.





Thank you for your continuous interest and support of MIATA.





[1] Leslie M. Immunology uncaged. Science 327; 26 March 2010, 1573





Sincerely yours;











Sylvia, Cedrik, and Axel





















Photos

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workshop-pic1-2

Contact

Sylvia Janetzki, MD
Coordinator of the CIC Assay Working Group
ZellNet Consulting, Inc.
+1-201-346-0710

Cedrik Britten, MD
Scientific secretary CIMT &
Steering Committee member of the CIMT Immunoguiding Program (CIP)
+49-6131-57627013

Axel Hoos, MD, PhD
Co-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the CIC