Colon Therapy Research Consortium (COLTHERES)

Download Profile PDF
At a Glance
  • Status: Completed Consortium
  • Year Launched: 2011
  • Initiating Organization: European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7)
  • Initiator Type: Government
  • Disease focus:
    Oncology
  • Location: Europe
COLTHERES

Abstract

The Colon Therapy Research (COLTHERES) consortium brings together clinical centers and translational researchers funded in the European Union to define and perform biomarker-driven clinical trials to improve cancer therapy outcomes. This four-year consortium will use comprehensively molecularly annotated colon cancers as a “test-bed” to define specific biomarkers of response or resistance to signaling pathway agents.

Mission

The COLTHERES consortium aims to identify validated risk and patient-response stratification criteria, which can then be used to rationally develop companion diagnostic assays and more streamlined clinical trials for colon cancer.

One focus is on colorectal cancer, the treatment of which is limited by the emergence of secondary resistance. The consortium aims to understand the genetic background of individual cancer cases, and the presence of certain “biomarkers” can determine the outcome of drug treatment. The consortium initiative aims to understand what defines the sensitivity and resistance to agents targeting the EGFR signaling pathway in colorectal cancer.

Consortium History

March 2011 – Program launched as “Modelling and predicting sensitivity to targeted therapies in colorectal cancers”

Financing

6M € of funding from the EU Framework-7 program

Members of the consortium have found that BRAF inhibition causes a rapid feedback activation of EGFR, supporting continued CRC proliferation. This also indicates that BRAF-mutant colon cancers might benefit from combinatorial therapy consisting of BRAF and EGFR inhibitors.
 
Importantly, the consortium has been able to detect these mutations in the blood of patients several months before radiographic evidence of disease progression. This offers a time window for treating or reversing drug-resistant malignant clones from emerging.

Homepage

http://www.coltheres.org/

Other website

http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/98370_en.html

Points of Contact

Alberto Bardelli, Coordinator
IRCC University of Torino      

Sponsors & Partners

IRCC University of Torino

University Hospital Leuven

Hospital Vall d’Hebron

Ospedale Niguarda Ca’ Granda

Horizon Discovery

Agendia

NKI

Fundacio Privada Institut d’Investigacio Biomedica de Bellvitge

University of Liverpool

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

ARTTIC in Brussels

Last Updated: 04/22/2016
The Consortia-pedia Catalogue is a living resource, and we are always adding new consortia. Provide information here about your collaboration to apply to be included in the Catalogue.
Register your consortium  
All the information contained in the Consortia-pedia was collected from publically available sources. Decisions to include or exclude a particular listing from Consortia-pedia were also made on the basis of publically available information and the criteria outlined in the FAQs. This site is intended to be an objective resource for the community, and inclusion does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or approval by FasterCures or the Milken Institute.