On Sunday, 24 November, Frederik De Smet, our project coordinator, delivered an engaging lecture at KU Leuven’s Health Sciences Campus Gasthuisberg during Science day. He shared his work on immunotherapy and glioblastoma treatments. This was also a great opportunity to show how the GLIOMATCH project leverages immunotherapy and precision medicine to improve outcomes for adults and children with brain tumours.
Visit our photo gallery for more pictures from the event.
Glioblastoma Awareness Day (GBM Day) was marked on 17 July 2024, a crucial occasion dedicated to increasing awareness of glioblastoma, fostering research, and offering support to patients and their families affected by this brain tumour. In support of this cause, GLIOMATCH launched a social media campaign throughout July 2024 to highlight brain cancer awareness. Here, we summarise the key points from our campaign.
Each year, around 64,000 people in Europe are diagnosed with brain cancer, highlighting the urgent need for ongoing research and better treatment options.
Glioblastoma (GBM) is one of the most aggressive and lethal forms of brain cancer, representing 50% of all adult brain tumours. Despite medical advancements, the prognosis for GBM remains bleak. Likewise, paediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGG) pose significant health challenges for children and young adults, making up a substantial portion of paediatric brain tumours.
Despite extensive research over the past 30 years, mortality rates for GBM and pHGG remain high. This highlights the urgent need for dedicated research to develop more effective treatments and ultimately find a cure. Global funding and awareness around brain tumour research remain comparatively low. Our consortium recognised the need to address this issue. We are proud to be working towards improving the lives of all those affected by GBM and pHGG together with our GLIOMATCH project partners.
Brain tumours, including GBM and pHGG, are notoriously difficult to treat due to their aggressive nature. The symptoms of brain tumours can vary widely, but common signs include:
Diagnosing a brain tumour typically involves brain imaging, such as MRI, and a biopsy to confirm the type of tumour.
The EU has shown a strong commitment to cancer research through its Horizon Europe programme, which allocates €95.5 billion for research and innovation from 2021 to 2027. The EU Cancer Mission (CM), part of this initiative, aims to improve the lives of over 3 million people by 2030 through prevention, treatment, and support for affected families. The CM’s focus areas include understanding cancer, prevention and early detection, diagnosis and treatment, and enhancing patients’ quality of life.
GLIOMATCH, an EU-funded project, is part of the Understanding (tumour-host) Interaction Cluster alongside other projects such as ARTURO, HIT-GLIO, MULTIR, THRIVE, and SPACETIME. These projects collaborate to identify common challenges, share best practices, and maximise the impact of their research efforts.
GLIOMATCH project coordinator Frederik De Smet from KU Leuven discussed collaboration opportunities during the “EU Cancer Mission – First Project Cluster Policy Webinar: Understanding Cancer” on 4 July 2024. According to Prof. De Smet, “Communicating together on common themes with policymakers is far more powerful for driving change and being heard than doing so individually for each project.” Together with our GLIOMATCH partners, we continue to call for EU decision-makers to prioritise research and ensure equal access to the latest diagnostic tools and treatments across Europe.
Patient organisations like Cancer Patients Europe (CPE) play a vital role in the fight against brain cancer. Francisco Lozano, Chair and Patient Advocate of CPE, emphasised the importance of these organisations in addressing patient needs and influencing policymakers. CPE’s involvement with GLIOMATCH ensures that patient perspectives remain at the forefront of research and advocacy efforts.
Francisco Lozano believes that GBM Awareness Day is a crucial moment to highlight the devastating impact of this cancer on countless individuals across Europe and globally. He says, “By working together, we can advance research to deepen our understanding and develop effective treatments. Equally important are policy efforts to ensure that everyone, everywhere in Europe, benefits from the latest innovations.”
Throughout July, we launched the #GBMAwarenessCampaign to reaffirm our commitment to advancing research, supporting patients and families, and ultimately finding a cure for this devastating disease. Follow GLIOMATCH on LinkedIn and Facebook for more information on brain tumour research and updates on our milestones towards improving the clinical outcomes of GBM and pHGG.
The GLIOMATCH project kick-off meeting took place from 25-27 March 2024 and was hosted by KU Leuven, the project coordinator, at the Faculty Club in Leuven, Belgium. This marks the first in-person gathering of the project’s 14 partner institutions.
GLIOMATCH, a Horizon Europe project, aims to enhance brain cancer treatment through the application of immunotherapy. The project’s focus lies in establishing an MRI radio-multiomics digital hub to aid clinicians in matching treatments for patients. This requires collecting data from both past and new clinical trials.
Our project officer was present at the meeting and briefed partners on the support available from the European Health and Digital Executive Agency, as well as the necessary project guidelines. Additionally, she outlined the EU Mission on Cancer, a collective effort involving approximately 50 European projects grouped into 8 clusters. GLIOMATCH is specifically aligned with the “Understanding (tumour-host interactions)” cluster. Within this cluster, we will collaborate with other EU-funded projects to identify synergies and share best practices across various areas of cooperation. Stay tuned for more information on our website regarding cluster initiatives!
The talks on the first day centred around clinical trials. Clinicians from the eight participating clinical centres aligned on inclusion criteria for adult and paediatric immuno-oncology treated patients across retrospective patient cohorts. Workshops dedicated to both retrospective and prospective clinical trials provided a platform to develop a unified approach and address key challenges regarding protocols, inclusion criteria, and ethical considerations. Clinical trial discussions were complemented by talks on ethics and legal requirements, data management, and socioeconomic aspects, which are essential to ensuring that GLIOMATCH reaches its goals.
The meeting also served to delineate the roles of each partner and highlight the interdependencies between various work packages, brainstorm about stakeholder and patient involvement, and plan the upcoming year to ensure that GLIOMATCH progresses optimally.
Given the complexity of this project, effective coordination is paramount. Meeting in person at the outset enabled comprehensive discussions covering clinical, data, legal, and social aspects simultaneously. We are optimistic that the collaborative efforts of our partners will enhance treatment for both adults and children afflicted by this aggressive form of cancer, while also advancing technology in multiomics and brain tumours in Europe and beyond.
The GLIOMATCH press release from January 2024 introduces the project and its goals. Read about it in our news article below or download the press release as pdf.
The World Health Organization reveals a sombre reality: cancer ranks as the world’s second-leading cause of death. Without intervention, the European Cancer Information System predicts that Europe alone will see a rise in diagnosed cases from 2.7 million to 3.24 million yearly by 2040. Cancer poses a tremendous strain on individuals, families, communities, and healthcare systems. Malignant gliomas, or highly aggressive brain tumours, take centre stage in this mounting crisis. With under 2% of long-term survivors, their grip on patients and their families is nothing short of devastating.
GLIOMATCH is set to rewrite this grim narrative by pioneering targeted brain cancer treatment. In alignment with Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, it tackles the EU Cancer Mission‘s four-pronged assignment: understanding cancer, prevention and early detection, diagnosis and treatment, and quality of life for patients and their families.
Challenges in reducing brain cancer mortality persist due to patient variability and the complex, ever-changing nature of each tumour. Immunotherapy shows promise, albeit selectively, as biomarkers remain scarce, hampering patient identification. Elusive tracking of treatment efficacy adds to the bleak scenario. Presently, nearly 20% of adult Glioblastoma (GBM) and paediatric high-grade glioma (pHGG) patients may benefit from treatment tailored to the characteristics of their tumour. In the absence of suitable biomarkers, many receive suboptimal or random immunotherapy applications.
The GLIOMATCH team seeks change. It will develop a biomarker framework, combining deep tissue profiling and non-invasive MRI imaging and empowering clinical professionals to precisely tailor and interpret treatments for GBM/pHGG patients. This offers hope for improved outcomes.
For over two decades, the standard of care for GBM and pHGG treatment has remained unaltered. Over five years, GLIOMATCH plans to shatter the status quo with three pivotal innovations: an MRI Radio-Multiomics Digital Hub, a state-of-the-art spatio-temporal pathological model, and an extensive data lake. By aligning across 8 European clinical centres, the project’s clinical trials will analyse the largest cohort of immuno-oncology treated GBM/pHGG patients, unlocking invaluable insights, and proposing novel treatment options. Extensive clinical trials will harness the power of data by integrating spatially resolved, multi-layered tissue maps with non-invasive MRI images, creating a cutting-edge MRI Radio-Multiomics Hub. With this hub, clinical professionals will be able to stratify patients, match therapies, and interpret treatment efficacy with unprecedented precision. Integration of its work into the Understanding Cancer Initiative (UNCAN) compatible data lake, will further enhance data-driven cancer therapy decision-making.
KU Leuven will lead the GLIOMATCH consortium uniting 14 partners from diverse disciplines, including clinical experts, medical practitioners, data scientists, and health economists. This alliance, bolstered by active patient involvement, is well-equipped to explore uncharted territories of brain cancer treatment and contribute to Europe’s holistic strategy of mitigating the adverse societal impact of the disease.
Who better to coordinate this project than KU Leuven, currently ranked as the top grant recipient university of Horizon Europe’s funds for research and innovation? The university boasts the Laboratory for Precision Cancer Medicine (LPCM), attached to the Translational Cell and Tissue Research Unit of the Department of Imaging and Pathology and the Leuven Institute for Single-cell Omics (LISCO), dedicated to precision matching of cancer treatments with patients.
Under the coordination of KU Leuven, the consortium of partners from diverse disciplines, including clinical experts, medical practitioners, data scientists, and health economists, will be working on pioneering personalised therapies for brain cancer patients.
The GLIOMATCH project aimed at advancing precision medicine for brain cancer patients has received a total funding of €12.59 million from the EU, Switzerland, and the UK.
GLIOMATCH is now a Horizon Europe funded Research and Innovation Action. The project is aimed at improving the outcome of malignant brain tumours in adults and children, as well as better understanding immunotherapy for brain cancer treatment.
By investigating solutions to alleviate the societal impacts of brain cancer, the project aligns with the objectives of the EU Cancer Mission and contributes to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 4.
It is a five year project starting in January 2024 and aligning 14 pan-European partners from 10 different member states.
