MORPHEUS: Identification of an optimal duration of anticoagulant treatment in patients with unprovoked venous thromboembolism (VTE)
MORPHEUS - Prognosis Improvement of Unprovoked Venous Thromboembolism Using Personalized Anticoagulant Therapy - is an initiative funded by the UE whose purpose is to improve the long-term management of patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE), a serious condition that often occurs without underlying risk factors.
Current guidelines recommend indefinite anticoagulation, which is associated with an increased bleeding risk. MORPHEUS will integrate clinical, laboratory, imaging, and socio-anthropological markers to develop a time-dependent, multi-component tool for shared decision-making on anticoagulant treatment duration.
The effectiveness of this tool will be tested in the ETHER international stepped wedge cluster randomized trial.
The consortium that conducts the project is coordinated by the Centre Hospitalier Regional et Universitaire de Brest (France) and it gathers leading institutions from a wide variety of countries across Europe (Spain, Poland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland). This 5-year-project with 14 partners (GA nº 101095698) has been granted around €10 million, funded within the scope of the Horizon Europe R&D programme, under the call "Optimising effectiveness in patients of existing prescription drugs for major diseases (except cancer) with the use of biomarkers" (HORIZON-HLTH-2022-TOOL-11).
Our institution acts as the National Coordinating Centre for ETHER in Spain. The team is led by Dr. DAVID JIMÉNEZ CASTRO, Head of Respiratory diseases group (Area 5 - Chronic Pathologies and Surgery Research). Spain will contribute to this project with a total of 8 clinical recruitment sites from a geographically wide range:
- Hospital Univ. Ramón y Cajal (Madrid)
- Hospital Clinic (Barcelona)
- Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol (Barcelona)
- Hospital Virgen del Rocío (Sevilla)
- Hospital Univ. Doctor Peset (Valencia)
- Hospital Juan XXIII (Tarragona)
- Hospital Galdakao (Vizcaya)
- Hospital Univ. de A Coruña (A Coruña)
Moreover, our activity as Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) also goes beyond our Hospital in this project. Dra. MARÍA ÁNGELES GÁLVEZ MÚGICA is responsible for this CTU which is part of SCReN (national platform of ECRIN - European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network). It will be in charge of the clinical trial management in Spain and will also coordinate the monitoring of three of the clinical sites to ensure the goals of the project are achieved.
"MORPHEUS exemplifies the transversality and collaborative spirit of the participating institutions, contributing significantly to advancements in both health and socio-anthropological research, particularly in optimizing anticoagulant management for venous thromboembolism."
