Personalised Cancer Therapy

In advanced cancer, choosing the right therapy is particularly critical. However, not every treatment works equally well for every patient. Tumours differ not only from person to person, but also change over the course of the disease. At the same time, effective drugs are already available, but they are often not used in a sufficiently targeted way.

The aim of the Innovation Focus is to establish a clinically validated platform for personalised cancer treatment, thereby aligning cancer medicine more closely with the individual situation of each person. Through modern laboratory methods, digital technologies and artificial intelligence, therapies are to be selected more precisely in future, offering better chances of success and reducing the burden on those affected. The initiative builds on advances in personalised oncology and combines research and clinical application in an innovative way.

The approach is aimed in particular at people with advanced or recurrent cancers in whom standard therapies are not sufficiently effective. Building on extensive experience in metastatic breast cancer, the approach is intended to become available for other tumour types as well.

Patient-specific tumour models are generated in the laboratory from fresh tumour tissue. These models can be used to test various drugs and drug combinations before treatment begins, making it possible to better estimate which therapy is potentially effective for the individual patient. The results support treating clinicians in their treatment decisions.

Treatment success depends not only on the tumour cells themselves, but also on their surroundings - the so-called tumour microenvironment. This has a significant influence on growth, spread, and the efficacy of treatment.

The Innovation Focus therefore examines both the tumour cells and their interaction with surrounding tissue and immune cells. This creates a more comprehensive picture of the disease and a more realistic basis for selecting possible therapies.

These analyses generate large amounts of data. Artificial intelligence helps bring this information together and evaluate it. It supports the identification of possible treatment options but does not replace medical decisions. In particular, when analysing image data from the tumour models, artificial intelligence enables rapid analysis of the data and therefore significantly faster results than conventional methods.

A key goal is also to significantly shorten the duration of the testing phase leading to a treatment recommendation, from three to two weeks.

The Innovation Focus aims to help identify effective therapies more quickly and avoid treatments that are unlikely to succeed. If a tumour develops resistance to a drug during treatment, an alternative, promising therapy option can be quickly identified on the basis of existing test results. This can reduce the burden on patients, improve treatment decisions, and enhance the quality of life of those affected.

At the same time, the Innovation Focus creates a platform on which clinical care, research and digital innovation work together. This allows new findings to feed directly into treatment and enables personalised oncology to be continuously developed further.

In the long term, this approach can also help avoid unnecessary treatment costs, with the aim that the corresponding tests will in future be covered by health insurers.

Protecting privacy is of the utmost importance. Health data are processed in accordance with applicable data protection regulations and used exclusively for defined clinical and scientific purposes. Samples and data are anonymised upon arrival at the laboratory. The exchange of data with treating clinicians takes place exclusively within the secure IT infrastructure of the USB. Artificial intelligence serves as a supporting tool in the analysis of complex data and the identification of possible treatment options. Responsibility for medical decisions always lies with the treating healthcare professionals.