Project description
Innovative tool to predict cancer patients’ individual sensitivity to radiation treatment
Radiotherapy (RT) is a standard medical treatment in approximately 50 % of cancer patients, but up to 10 % of patients treated with RT experience different long-term side effects. Therefore, there is an urgent need for diagnostic solutions based on individual patient variations in RT tolerance and side effect risk. France-based company NovaGray has developed a novel diagnostic test that uses blood samples for the stratification of breast and prostate cancer patients based on their level of radiosensitivity and the likelihood of developing side effects, providing oncologists with a fundamental decision-making tool. The EU-funded NovaTests project will define and plan clinical trials, following them with business model analysis.
Objective
Each year, two out of three cancer patients undergo radiation therapy, meaning close to 1.5M patients in Europe and 2M in the US. However, scientific evidences prove a direct link between radiation therapy and several serious late effects. This because patient’s tolerance to radiation vary significantly and radiotherapy affects indiscriminately both healthy and cancer cells, damaging also active working cells, tissues or organs around the tumour. There is, therefore, an unmet clinical need to tailor treatments to each patient’s unique biology. NovaTests are the first predictive radio-sensitivity tests for cancer treatment. By analysing a simple blood sample, in one week time, we can determine with high accuracy (over 90%) not only whether a patient is sensitive or not to radiation but also how sensitive the patient is. We allow for more efficient treatments and improved quality of cancer survivors, not only during radiation treatments but for the rest of their lives. Our first test, the NovaGray Breast® is aimed at measuring radiosensitivity for breast cancer patients. It meets all regulatory requirements of the 98/79 directive pertaining to the in-vitro diagnostic medical devices, has been stamped with the CE marking in February 2016. So far, €0.5M million have been invested into the development and testing of technology to ensure its robustness and efficiency and move into the next stage of tests development and validation. Within the overall project, we intend to scale-up the process by automating it and run a multi-centre clinical trial to validate the reliability of the test. Further ongoing developments include the extension of the technology to prostate and lung cancers. The proposed work in Phase 1 of the SME instrument fits into our overall plan to reach the market by contributing the financial resources needed to plan a fast sound wider deployment of NovaTests and their market uptake.
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.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologyprostate cancer
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinesurgery
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologylung cancer
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologybreast cancer
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
You need to log in or register to use this function
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
34960 MONTPELLIER
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.