Project description
Patient-specific tumour replicas for pharmaceutical testing
Despite global investment in oncological drug development, only a small percentage of drugs enter the market. This is further compounded by cancer heterogeneity, varying clinical stages and mutational status, leading to off-target toxicity and drug resistance. Funded by the European Research Council, the 3DTUMOUR project aims to improve the success rate of drug development and generate a personalised medicine tool for clinicians. Through proprietary 3D bioprinting technology, the project will create patient-specific tumour replicas for pharmaceutical testing. This approach will offer the possibility to test the efficacy of drugs ex vivo for each patient, accelerating effective treatments and reducing toxicity and resistance.
Objective
Cancer and tumours are exceptionally heterogeneous in tissue and cellular composition, clinical stage, and mutational status. Additionally, the presence of multiple cancers or metastatic tumours in patients leads to complicated drug regimens resulting in high off-target toxicity, unexpected drug resistance and difficulties in understanding the therapeutic effects.
Despite a global investment in oncological drug development reaching 5 bn USD, less than 5% of all oncological drugs in the pipeline enter the therapy toolbox. Given the huge burden that cancer poses at all levels in society - leading cause of mortality worldwide, expected to reach 20 M deaths by 2050- technologies that enable pharmaceutical companies to increase the efficiency of drug development may alleviate the threat imposed to the more than 50 M people currently living with cancer.
Such technologies include pre-clinical models that represent the tumour microenvironment and reveal the effect of drug candidates in laboratory tumour replicas. To provide clinically relevant information, such models must be patient specific and represent simultaneously the specificity of the target tissue and the cell heterogeneity of the tumour microenvironment. In addition, to be industrially relevant, they must be implementable, reproducible and high throughput. Commercially available solutions do not meet these requirements.
3DTUMOUR provides a proprietary technology to produce multiple 3D bioprinted replicas of patient-derived tumour models that faithfully represent the therapeutic target for a drug candidate.
3DTUMOUR aims at increasing the drug development success rate by transferring to industry this pharmaceutical testing platform. The successful outcome of this PoC will provide clinicians with a tool to test the efficacy of drugs ex vivo, accelerating the onset of efficient treatments and reducing off-target toxicity and unexpected drug resistance by applying a personalized-medicine approach.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC-POC - HORIZON ERC Proof of Concept Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-POC
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
20009 San Sebastian
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.