Euformatics, Oncompass Medicine and Institut Curie awarded Eurostars funding to develop an oncology solution with genomic noise canceling
Press Release September 2023
Espoo, Finland, September 12th, 2023. Euformatics has partnered with Oncompass Medicine from Hungary and Institut Curie from France and submitted a joint development project proposal to Eurostars 3, Call 4 that closed in April 2023. After a multi-phase evaluation by industry experts, an ethics committee, and an independent evaluation panel, the three partners’ proposal to design an end-to-end oncology solution with genomic noise canceling was awarded funding.
Eurostars is a joint program with 37 participating countries that is created to promote European R&D collaboration between innovative growth companies. This program is developed by EUREKA and the European Commission as part of the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs.
Current genomic analyses show a significant problem when it comes to detecting tumor variants from low quality sequencing data. In a real-world setting, there are often artifacts and other noise in the data. As a result, tumor variants with low allele frequencies can be missed by the clinical geneticist analyzing the sample. Thus, these low-frequency mutations of medical importance remain undiscovered, affecting clinical cancer diagnosis and therapy.
To satisfy this unmet need and improve the care and survival of cancer patients, Euformatics, Oncompass Medicine and Institut Curie have teamed up to develop a precision oncology platform that cancel out genomic noise. Thanks to this funding, the three partners will join forces to meet this challenge in a 2.5-year project with a ~1-million-euro budget.
Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine, two cutting edge companies specializing in clinical diagnostic software, will build on their existing products to deliver a disruptive interpretation solution that will be validated using the rich and extensive real-world oncology data from Institut Curie, a world-leading cancer research organization. This data will be derived from Institut Curie clinical research projects.
Dr. Christophe Roos, Chief Scientific Officer of Euformatics, comments on the Eurostars funding, “This funding award was a result of several iterations during the past few years. Finding a challenge in this field that is both solvable in a relatively short time window but still advancing the state of the art in molecular pathology was not easy. Fortunately, we have the best possible partners in this project with Oncompass and Institut Curie.”
Dr. Barbara Vodicska, Head of Translational Science, Oncompass Medicine, continues, “The integrity of input data is a fundamental pillar for the effectiveness of decision support systems, profoundly influencing the quality of the output. We are enthusiastic about collaboratively establishing an optimized workflow to standardize and democratize precision oncology, spanning from raw data to therapy selection. With the inclusion of bioinformatics, clinical, and reporting expertise, we have everything needed for a successful project.”
Dr. Maud Kamal, Scientific Manager of the Department of Drug Development & Innovation (D3i) at Institut Curie, concludes “The Eurostar funding award will be key to test and optimize the clinical performance of this envisioned solution for precision oncology, designed to improve diagnosis and patient care.”
The project will start in the next few months and run until 2026. At the end of the project, the consortium will seek IVDR certification for the oncology solution to be used in clinical diagnostics in addition to cancer research.
About Euformatics:
Euformatics is a Finnish software company that specializes in high standard bioinformatics tools for genomic data interpretation. Since 2010, Euformatics has been helping medical doctors and molecular genetics laboratories provide better precision medicine for cancer, common or rare disease diagnostics. At present, our core solution is the Genomics Hub which includes omnomicsNGS; for clinical analysis and reporting of patient NGS data, and omnomicsQ; for NGS data quality management.
For more information, please visit our website www.euformatics.com
About Oncompass Medicine:
Oncompass is the winner of the Future Unicorn Award 2021 of DIGITALEUROPE, the association of technology companies in forty countries in Europe. The company is the global champion of GETINTHERING startup competition 2021 out of competing companies of 109 countries. Oncompass was the first to develop a software as a medical device based on artificial intelligence that proved to improve therapeutic decisions in precision oncology. Oncompass also provides end-to-end services for oncology centers that wish to provide precision oncology to their patients.
For more information, please visit the website www.oncompassmedicine.com
About Institut Curie:
Institut Curie, France’s leading cancer center, combines an internationally-renowned research center with a cutting-edge hospital group, treating all types of cancer, including the rarest. Founded in 1909 by Marie Curie, Institut Curie has 3 sites (Paris, Saint-Cloud and Orsay) with over 3,700 researchers, physicians and health professionals working on its 3 missions: treatment, research and teaching. A private foundation with public utility status, Institut Curie is authorized to accept donations and bequests, and thanks to the support of its donors, is able to accelerate discoveries and improve patient treatment and quality of life. Find out more: www.curie.fr
Institut Curie has been a certified “Carnot Curie Cancer Institute” since 2011. The Carnot certification is a recognition of excellence awarded to academic research organizations whose quality and involvement in partnership-based research have been demonstrated. Curie Cancer offers industrial partners the opportunity to implement research collaborations utilizing the expertise of Institut Curie’s research teams to develop innovative therapeutic solutions for cancer, from therapeutic target to clinical approval. Curie Cancer is a member of the Carnot FINDMED network, a group of thirteen Carnot institutes, to facilitate access to their technological platforms and to their innovations for very small and medium-sized companies in the pharmaceutical industry. Find out more:http://www.instituts-carnot.eu/fr/institut-carnot/curie-cancer – https://findmed.fr
Press Relations:
Tommi Kaasalainen, CEO, Euformatics: tommi.kaasalainen@euformatics.com
Istvan Petak, Managing Director, Oncompass Medicine: istvan.petak@oncompassmedicine.com
Célia Khalif, Communication Manager Institut Carnot Curie Cancer: celia.khalif@curie.fr
Consortiums may submit applications to the Eurostars program from any subject area. There are two cut-off dates annually, and all the applications submitted before each deadline are processed in one batch.
EUREKA is a European program that supports innovative international projects to boost Europe’s competitiveness.