Tumour cells can differ greatly both between patients (inter-tumour heterogeneity) and within patients (intra-tumour heterogeneity). These differences affect how patients respond to cancer therapy and hampers wide deployment of personalised medicine for cancer treatment. PREDICT is an Innovative Training Network that will educate 15 Early Stage Researcher (ESRs) in the fields of radiomics and personalised medicine. These ESRs will be trained to use big data analytics on large amounts of radiographic images to determine tumour heterogeneity and predict how patients will respond to treatment. This project will run from October 2017 until September 2021.
ECPC’s Role
The European Cancer Patient Coalition will take part in PREDICT as a partner organisation. We will contribute to the training courses by offering expertise in patient involvement, as well as advocating the role of patients/co-researchers as the best partnership model between researchers and patients, since it allows patients to contribute with their unique experience to key decisions regarding research projects. The ECPC will also participate in the Project Advisory Board to monitor the project progress and provide input on the design and direction, and using its communication channels to share information about the project, its results and its participants. A representative of the ECPC will attend each annual meeting and deliver a presentation on the important role that people with cancer play in research. The ECPC will also participate in workshops on communicating complex research results to a public audience, understanding the patient perspective, and on scientific writing.
Contact Points
ECPC: Isabelle Manneh-Vangramberen, ECPC Head of Health and Research Programmes
Project Coordinator: Floor Franssen, Maastricht University
Funding
PREDICT is funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions: a part of the EU Horizon 2020 Programme, Grant Agreement N° 766276.