Breast Cancer Awareness Month: focus on Horizon projects managed by HaDEA

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and the leading cause of cancer deaths among women. 

To promote awareness and screening, the month of October is dedicated to breast cancer awareness. On this occasion, let’s look at the research advances of some Horizon Europe ‘Health’ and Horizon 2020 projects managed by HaDEA that are promoting patient centric approaches and personalised treatment. 

• The project REBECCA (REsearch on BrEast Cancer-induced chronic conditions supported by Causal Analysis of multi-source data) focuses on studying comorbidities associated with breast cancer and its treatment, using real-world data (RWD). The project has also developed a system to support interventions and enhance healthcare quality and is evaluating its feasibility through 7 clinical studies in 3 countries. The pilot in Spain, for instance, is collecting data to understand and improve bone health in breast cancer patients, to counteract the negative impacts caused by treatments. Analysing this data will enable to identify potential differences in the quality of life of patients depending on the gravity of their adverse effects, in order to adjust management and treatment strategies.
• Over the past two years, the RadioVal project has worked to develop and implement artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, especially AI-driven radiomics tools*, to improve the accuracy and personalisation of breast cancer care. RadioVal has launched an international study to rigorously assess the performance of these tools and ensure that these innovations are robust, fair, and scalable for widespread use. The project is also in the final stages of developing RadioNac, a tool aimed at improving the predictive accuracy of treatment outcomes. As the project coordinator, Prof. Karim Lekadir (ICREA Research Professor, Universitat de Barcelona) explains, 

"RadioVal is one of the first projects to perform a comprehensive clinical validation of AI-based breast cancer treatment planning in real-world practice. Thanks to EU funding, the feasibility of AI-based treatment planning will be assessed across eight diverse hospitals covering various regions in Europe and beyond.”

• The ONCOVALUE project is working to improve cancer care by enabling cancer centers to collect and analyse high-quality RWD. The collected data, together with an AI-based framework developed by the project, will allow to enhance cost-effective evaluations and to assess the real-life effectiveness of novel cancer treatments. The project focuses on two key therapeutic areas: breast cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer. Collecting and evaluating patient-reported outcomes will lead to improved well-being, while the implementation of value-based cancer care in European cancer hospitals will help reduce the growing burden of cancer treatment.
• The MammoScreen project is working to provide clinical evidence on MammoWave, a new medical device based on microwaves, assessing its sensitivity and specificity for breast cancer detection in women. MammoWave aims to bring an innovative, safe and non-invasive solution for early breast cancer detection and prevention in the European healthcare systems. The clinical study has been active in 8 centres, with more than 2000 women participating in the study. The project will also soon release an app with the objective of raising awareness on the early detection and prevention of breast cancer.

“With support from the EU, the project undertakes extensive clinical research across multiple countries, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration of inter- and intra-consortium stakeholders as well as Health Technology Assessment. MammoScreen prioritises a patient-centric approach, actively engaging women to shape outcomes that enhance early cancer prevention and improve citizen care.” 

(Letizia Pontoriero, Scientific Project Manager)

• The RESCUER project has worked to unify clinical standards throughout Europe. The project is providing strategies to personalise cancer treatment by applying innovative mathematical approaches, including machine learning, to predict the effect of drug combinations on treatment response. The project’s approach, for instance, has been able to predict the responsiveness of different patients to certain drugs (CDK4/6 inhibitors, designed to interrupt the growth of cancer cells) identifying who would need additional treatment, with clear benefits on clinical and economic outcomes and on patients’ quality of life. RESCUER has also discovered that certain treatment regimens (in terms of frequency and dosage of medicines) can lead to better clinical results without the need to change the administered drug. 

_{*AI-driven radiomic tools are advanced technologies that use AI to analyse medical images, extracting features that are not visible to the human eye. These tools enhance the ability to understand imaging data, such as Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scans, and support diagnosis and treatment.} 

Related links

REBECCA newsletter

RadioVal second anniversary and key achievements

Mammoscreen newsletter

Background 

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. The aims of Cluster 1 ‘Health’ include improving and protecting the health and wellbeing of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge, developing innovative solutions and integrating a gender perspective to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. 

Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s multiannual funding programme between 2014 and 2020.