Research

Research

In Europe, over 40 000 women die of ovarian cancer every year. In addition to surgery, most patients are treated with platinum-based chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the effect of the chemotherapy often decreases during the treatment cycles, and currently there are few effective treatments to those patients who develop resistance to platinum-based drugs. The survival of these patients has not improved much in the past decades and new solutions are in urgent need.

In the DECIDER project, a patient’s response to treatments is predicted using methods, which use, among others, histopathological and genomic data from the patient. Genomic changes and aberrations in gene functions are used to find effective, personalized treatments. This will be done by developing an open source program, which will integrate and visualize all relevant data from a patient. Using this information, doctors can more easily identify effective drugs for their patient. All patients participating in the research are treated in Finland, and Finnish patient organizations have an important advisory role in the project.

The companies involved in the project will be developing, producing and registering diagnostic kits (AB ANALITICA), producing a drug-sensitivity test based on the tumour tissue samples (2cureX), developing image based diagnostics of digital samples (Aiforia), and developing data pseudonymisation and anonymisation techniques necessary for the management of sensitive patient data for privacy risk protection (Veil.AI).

We also study the legal issues that impede or slow down the use of new treatments in order to facilitate commercialization and availability of personalized therapies in an ethically and legally sustainable manner.

The DECIDER leaflet that summarizes the goals of the project can be downloaded as pdf file from here.

The current version of the Data Management Plan of the project is available here.