The ONCOLOGICS consortium is launched to bring Personalised Medicine to the clinic by demonstrating that we can predict an individual’s tumour drug therapy responses through a platform comprising joint in silico computational modelling and functional validation in patient-derived tumor tissue cultivated ex vivo. This approach aims to move away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to identify individual therapies based on the unique genotypic and phenotypic characteristics of each tumour. Our ex vivo platforms, patient-derived tumour organoids and spheroid cultures, allow for a full systems medicine approach encompassing iterative cycles of computer model revision informed by ex vivo experiments, and targeted follow-up experiments guided by model predictions. Experimental readouts include patient cancer cell viability data as well as specific molecular readouts that report on cancer cell growth signaling. Ultimately, model predictions are tested against observed cancer patient therapy responses. The in silico and ex vivo platforms jointly pave the way for future ‘functional personalised medicine’. ONCOLOGICS represents a continuation and extension of the ERACoSysMed project COLOSYS and fits under the umbrella of the DrugLogics initiative that applies Systems Medicine approaches for therapy design.
