The culture of TOR thrives ethical values of internationalization and borderless knowledge with the ultimate goal of tackling complex problems of relevance for cancer patients. By converging local forces, critical mass and sharing expertise in complementary disciplines of the cancer sciences, TOR promotes scientific excellence, and proposes itself as a key partner for a number of European and worldwide collaborative endeavors.
In keeping with the principle of international collaboration and open science, TOR has already established world-wide networks with several local and international research partners. There are already three international agreements in place. A representative partnership is the agreement established with Indivumed GmbH to form a international scientific consortium with the scope of building a biobank and large datasets of whole genomic, proteomic and lipidomic data with full clinical data of oncological patients. These big data will be integrated into an international alliance, Onco AI-Med, to produce an approach of artificial-intelligence-driven advanced precision oncology.
The currently active partnerships involve:
Indivumed GmbH (https://www.indivumed.com), founded in 2002, CEO Hartmut Juhl, is an integrated global oncology company based in Hamburg, Germany, using a multi-omics approach for high quality rapid analysis of cancer versus normal tissue. The company was a member of the TCGA consortium. An agreement has been signed on January 2020 for the analysis of 200 patients/year for whole genomic sequencing, proteomic and lipidomics analyses correlated with full clinical data for at least 5 subsequent years. The project will focus on Liver, Kidney, Bladder, Colon-Rectum cancers. Data will be exchanges and analysed with the Indivumed’s 16 partners in North/South America, Europe and Asia. Cumulative results would facilitate the optimization of individualized therapy.
Onconetics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (www.onconetics.com), San Francisco California USA, founded in 2016 by Gabe Hitchcock, Luke Gruenert, engages in research and drug development for the emerging and highly sought-after field of personalized medicine in order to develop treatments for cancer and other genetic disorders. It combines well-established gene therapy exploiting micro-RNA. Onconetics has agreed (February 2020) to set up a laboratory within TOR premises.
Oncology Alliance for Individualized Medicine (Onco AI-Med) is an alliance network founded in March 2020 between Georgetown University (US), Oxford University (UK), Tor-Tor Vergata University (Italy), with partners in Japan, Korea, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Singapore, Sweden. The joint database is fully functional with over 5000 complete cases including multi-omics and clinical outcomes data. The bioinformatics partnership with Gnosis Data Analysis adds world class analytic abilities, critical to the optimal use of the rich data sets to develop a new platform for precision oncology. It is coordinated by John L. Marshall, MD, Director, The Ruesch Center for the Cure of GI Cancers, Chief, Hematology and Oncology, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Georgetown University Medical Center, MD, USA.