NPL 2.0 Update

Dear NRS members,

During the Dutch Lung Conference in Utrecht in June, we had the pleasure of chairing an interactive session around the restart of the National Program Lung research (NPL) that aims at brining all players in the field of respiratory medicine together again. After a short introduction on the history of and past projects within NPL, the session participants were divided in 6 groups to discuss the outcome of the NPL-NRS questionnaire. All interested NRS members had filled in this questionnaire online earlier this year to map the gaps in respiratory research from a scientific perspective. This has led to an impressive list of hundreds of topics in the categories prevention, diagnosis, treatment, pathophysiology and digitalization. Not an easy task to discuss all those topics in only 25 minutes! Luckily, the 6 groups of session participants were very enthusiastic and inspired, which led to fruitful discussions and interesting grouping of suggested topics into overarching themes. Amongst these themes were topics closely related to the Precision Medicine for more Oxygen (P4O2) project that is funded as a strategic public private partnership by Health Holland and that originated from the first round of NPL, but also inspiring new research topics including (indoor) air quality, digital medicine, lung repair and secondary prevention (prevention of disease progression).

Next step includes combining these newly defined topics with the clinical perspectives as formulated in the “tweede kennisagenda NVALT in het kader van Zorgevaluatie” from the NVALT (Nederlandse Vereniging van Artsen voor Longziekten en Tuberculose), the “national research agenda” of the CAHAG (COPD and Astma Huisartsen Advies Groep) and the “Care Gaps” identified by the Dutch Pediatric Society (NVK) as represented by the SKL (Sectie Kinder Longziekten). Additionally, the selected topics will be coupled to the Longfonds agenda and the societal and patient perspectives inquired via patient organizations, the Long Alliantie Nederland (LAN) and the Longfonds.

Ultimately, this approach will lead to a shortlist of overarching research themes with a broad scope that will be presented to all NRS members again during an onsite meeting on November 9. During this meeting, all interested NRS members will be asked to: (i) rank the research themes according to their interest, (ii) to list their own expertise (iii) to indicate what other fields of expertise are required and (iii) to highlight what they would like to add to these new initiatives. Ultimate goal of this November meeting will be creating new collaborative initiatives that will work together on further exploring how these themes can be transformed into successful research projects and where they could be submitted for funding.

In parallel to this NPL 2.0 setup to explore new research themes, another trajectory will be started simultaneously to expand the current P4O2 project with the prevention and early treatment suggestions made by the NRS members during the online questionnaire and the DLC session. To this end, the current P4O2 consortium will be expanded with other research groups interested in prevention and early treatment of respiratory diseases to prepare a “Groeifonds” application (deadline February 3, 2023).

For both trajectories, we would like to invite everyone who is interested in contributing to any stage of the process to contact us by sending an email to nrs@nrs-science.nl. We will use your contact information to create a NPL mailing list via which we will keep you updated on every step of both trajectories as we are convinced that such a joint effort will be the key to success again!

Regards,

The NPL committee

Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee
Gerard Koppelman
Annemie Schols
George Nossent
Hermelijn Smits
Agnes Boots