Observatorio de I+D+i UPM

NeoMark is a EC-FP7-IST project investigating an innovative strategy and develops the appropriate technologies to identify person-specific and disease-specific biomarkers for tumors, to assess recurrence risk and early identify relapses during follow-up. The project validates this approach Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) that represents about 5% of all cancers, with a recurrence rate of about 25% to 50% over five years, 90% of which within two years from surgery. Knowing in advance which patients have the higher risk of disease reoccurrence would enable less invasive and earlier treatments, with the potential to improve patients survival and quality of life. A new approach to this problem requires the collection, aggregation and analysis of large sets of clinical data together with information on the biology of the disease and an advanced study of affected tissues by novel image-interpretation techniques to be applied on different diagnostic exams. NeoMark provides the powerful computational resources and accurate and refined analysis algorithms necessary to process this multi-dimensional and large amount of data, to find the characterizing factors, or biomarkers, uniquely identifying the OSCC disease, like a personalized ID card (or bioprofile) of OSCC for each specific patient. The NeoMark system will be able to detect the presence of such bioprofile from patient´s data collected at follow-up, even when no signs of relapse are evident, so early triggering therapeutic actions. NeoMark also intends to identify a reduced set of most relevant genomic biomarkers for each individual patient, which could be assessed by means of a portable RT-PCR lab-on-chip device for a fast relapse risk evaluation, based on genomic data from blood or tissue only, developed by ST Microelectronics. This innovative device would constitute, once approved through wide clinical trials, a powerful and low-cost diagnostic equipment.