Descripció del projecte
Cancer survival exponentially increases when detected in an early phase. Unfortunately, current screening methods are inaccurate, invasive or impractical for the patient, achieving suboptimal results. This project aims to create a next-generation liquid biopsy that combines optimized plasma RNA profiling through next generation sequencing with state-of-the-art machine learning data analysis to detect warning signs in an accurate, fast and non-invasive way, everything out of a simple blood sample.
Analysing biofluids of patients is termed liquid biopsy. We plan to measure the existence of RNA, both messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) (together designated long RNA, “lRNA”) in liquid biopsies of blood plasma. Plasma consists of a complex milieu of metabolites, proteins and nucleic acids. lRNA are secreted or released by living and dying cells from a wide variety of organs into plasma. Changes in lRNA composition are able to reflect disease states. Since cancers are metabolically highly active tissues consisting of proliferating and dying cells, cancer-derived lRNA circulating in plasma are promising sources of diagnostic biomarkers. Despite huge promise, use of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) methods for global profiling of circulating lRNA (clRNA) biomarkers is in its infancy, mainly due to the cost and technical limitations that only recently were overcome. Contrary to common misconceptions, ctlRNA can be stable and abundant. It has been demonstrated that some lRNA are protected by inclusion in lipoproteic complexes or phospholipids.
Flomics is a pioneer in the sequencing of clRNA and is involved in similar projects in the scope of multiple diseases (Coronary artery Disease and Colorectal Cancer) with promising results. A few publications report promising results in measurement of ctlRNAs for cancer diagnosis but so far, no ctlRNA signature was derived from the global profiling of the plasma transcriptome. The goal of this project is to establish a novel screening tool for the diagnosis of different complex diseases, based on a signature of circulating lRNA biomarkers that is accurate, cheap, rapid and non-invasive, appropriate for mass screening programs for a population at risk. The project will combine advanced molecular biology techniques with next generation data analysis. It will also have a strong emphasis in the valorization of the intellectual proprierty and in the exploration of the market need.
The obtained data of this project will also be linked to clinical information like disease stage, therapy response, relapse rates and overall survival. In the long term, we believe that clRNA data will support therapy decisions and will be a powerful tool to monitor therapy response in clinical practice. This will increase the survival rates of the population, while reducing costs for healthcare providers. We aim to implement such a blood screening test in the standard blood tests portfolio offered in hospitals, clinics and diagnostic laboratories for every adult above 55 years with a smoking history and/or other health risk factors.
Our liquid biopsy test will calculate the risk of patients of being developing the disease already. In the high-risk group, current golden standard tools such as computer tomography (CT) or colonoscopy will be needed to confirm the diagnosis and to locate tumour for planning of surgical cancer resection. In low-risk patients further exploration could be completely skipped. This will cut on unnecessary repeated invasive procedures of healthy people and minimize the rate of false positive results from current screening methods.
