New treatment strategies to improve glioblastoma patient care and quality of life are urgently needed. Survival rates are very poor as virtually all glioblastomas recur and standard therapy has not changed for over 15 years. Around 25% of clinical trials in glioblastoma evaluate immunotherapies and several have reported long-term survival benefits in 10-20% of patients. We currently lack biomarkers to predict clinical benefit of immunotherapy in this highly heterogeneous disease.
The objective in IPerGlio is to consider clinical and immunological data integrated with sex and age as well as key lifestyle and environmental factors using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This represents a novel approach to guide personalised interventions improving glioblastoma patient care and quality of life. By applying AI generated models to these data, IPerGlio will deliver prognostic markers that can be used to guide decisions for combination treatment with immunotherapy in clinical trials. Furthermore, IPerGlio will address the ethical challenges concerning data security and sharing posed by personalised medicine and AI approaches through active stakeholder and patient involvement.
The IPerGlio projectwill strongly improve clinical decision-making for glioblastoma patients by identifying risk factors amenable to reinforce tertiary prevention and ensuring effective and responsible delivery of AI-guided personalised immunotherapy.