The project

The Accelerator Award enables team science across Europe. Funded through a partnership between Cancer Research UK, AIRC and FC AECC, it supports the creation of high quality tools and resources that will unlock new research into unanswered questions about cancer.

The project, led by Professor Jesús San Miguel at Clínica Universidad de Navarra, 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, Leukemia and Lymphoma.

The overall goal of the project is to better characterise the initial stages of these cancers, to help develop new precision therapies that shift the current treatment of these three blood cancer groups: focus on treating the cause of the disease, rather than the symptoms. This will help also tailoring treatments that manage minimal residue diseases (cancerous cells that remain after treatment), instead of waiting for a relapse.

Identifying precise biomarkers of early transformation

EDITOR will identify biomarkers for each hematological disease, through databases comprising over  5,000 patient samples and using mouse animal models.

Understanding & overcoming initial pre-malignant resistance

Previous projects have characterised tumour cells on bulk. EDITOR innovative approach will use genomic and cytomic studies to consider the context and heterogeneity of the tumours in normal, premalignant and minimal residue states.

In numbers

13

Institutions

3

Countries

5

Years

4.5

Million

FAQs

The major goal of EDITOR is not curing cancer, but providing the tools to do so in wide collaborative environment, exploring new therapeutics for several types of blood cancer. The results of the projects will be validated in mice, but won’t be applied to human patients. The development of new cancer therapies that are both effective and safe in humans is a long process and EDITOR is laying the foundations of what could be a new therapeutic approach.

Current therapeutic approaches treat the cancers once they are full blown, and they treat the symptoms instead of the root causes. EDITOR will locate the biomarkers present in the blood stream that indicate that a blood cancer is developing, allowing doctors to make an earlier diagnose, and locate therapeutic targets that are good candidates for a treatment.

Yes. EDITOR is an Open Access project, and the datasets, pipelines and programs used in the bioinformatics are available at the Research section of the webpage.

Yes, EDITOR is always open to collaborations. Please send a message through the form at the Contact section.