Objective
CLINICAL NEED
Every year in the EU ~45,300 and 330,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian and breast cancer respectively & 28,800 and 90,000 of these two groups of women will die as a consequence of these diseases. Currently there are no tools available that allow for:
a) Effective screening of ovarian and/or breast cancer of sufficient sensitivity and specificity to avoid potential over-diagnosis, or;
b) Stratification of patients into optimal personalised therapy regimes in ovarian/breast cancer.
EpiFemCare ADVANCES
Progress in personalised cancer medicine will only be possible with the development of bioassays involving the analysis of easy accessible biomaterials that contain stable target molecules reflective of disease. We will establish and clinically validate a series of blood tests based upon DNA methylation technology that will facilitate both early detection and prediction of therapeutic outcome in breast and ovarian cancer.
CONSORTIUM
Our pan-European academic-industrial consortium demonstrates diverse clinical, scientific & industrial expertise. We have access to the latest state of the art technologies and, integrally, the best available cohort and clinical trial sample sets required to ensure the success of the EpiFemCare program. GATC-Biotech and Genedata are Europe’s leading providers of DNA sequencing and bioinformatics for biomarker development and have developed serum DNA based prenatal tests. The clinical partners have access to unique cohort and clinical samples collected from >200,000 women well in advance of disease (UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening) or before and during treatment (SUCCESS Trial).
IMPACT
As a result of refined and improved patient stratification, EpiFemCare will:
- Reduce the late stage presentation of ovarian & breast cancer by 50%
- Reduce the requirement for 50% of breast cancer patients to have adjuvant therapies
- Reduce female cancer related fatalities as well as treatment-related morbidity by 20%
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsDNA
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologybreast cancer
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterials
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringmedical laboratory technologylaboratory samples analysis
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsepigenetics
Call for proposal
FP7-HEALTH-2012-INNOVATION-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research projectCoordinator
WC1E 6BT LONDON