Colon Therapy Research Consortium (COLTHERES)
Research Areas
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

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.
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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 |