EDITOR (Early detection and intervention) is a collaboration of 13 research institutions from the UK, Spain and Italy, focused on improving early detection and intervention of blood cancers, mainly monoclonal gammopathies, leukaemia and lymphoma.
Although the outcome of haematological malignancies has significantly improved in the last decade, only a small fraction of patients are cured. Treatment of these malignancies occurs only once full-blown cancer has developed.
Our best opportunity to eradicate cancer is early detection and intervention.
Throughout the development of the project, we will work on:
Developing tools to detect, purify and characterise transformed cells at both pre-malignant and minimal resistance disease (MRD) states.
Generating open-source databases including multi-omics characterisation of normal vs tumour vs immune cells from clinically-annotated patient populations.
Producing novel bioinformatic tools for integrating multilayer data.
Defining biomarkers for early intervention at pre-malignant and MRD states as well as novel targets.
Developing humanised mouse models of pre-malignant to full-blown disease.
Find novel biomarkers to more accurately identify patients at high-risk of transformation. These biomarkers would be well-suited for novel, pre-emptive therapies in pre-malignancy.
Improve response assessments based on the molecular and functional signatures of MRD cells, with the goal of tailoring post-MRD treatment strategies.
Have a deeper understanding of clonal heterogeneity on mechanisms of dissemination and chemo-resistance through the analysis of circulating tumour cells (CTC) and MRD clones at single cell level.
