PRECICOLON-CM

Colon cancer (CC) is one of the most important neoplasias worldwide in terms of incidence and lethality, being the one with the highest incidence in the Community of Madrid, and in Spain, with more than 45,000 new cases per year. As in most cancers, metastases are responsible for the death of a high percentage of patients with CC. In patients with metastatic CC, survival rates at 36 months are low, 24%, and even lower, 13%, at 5 years. The numbers highlight the need for scientific and technologically innovative strategies and approaches to improve survival and quality of life in these patients.

The PRECICOLON-CM Program is committed to undertake a comprehensive approach for CC, taking into account a multiplicity of factors that play relevant roles in the origin and progression of this neoplasia. To do so, PRECICOLON-CM profits from the multidisciplinary experience and resources of the five basic and clinical groups that make up this consortium.

PRECICOLON-CM is born with a deep translational vocation and aims to combine the use of novel cellular systems (organoids, tumor-associated fibroblasts, co-cultures of tumor and adipose tissue, etc.) obtained from patients treated at hospitals which belong to the consortium or collaborate with it, with cutting-edge technologies such as massive transcriptomic, proteomic and imaging data analyses and the study of biomarkers in solid and liquid biopsy in order to identify the etiopathogenic mechanisms of CC and its distant metastases.

Specifically, PRECICOLON-CM will focus on:

  • To investigate the role of tumor-associated fibroblasts in CC progression and metastasis, and in resistance to chemotherapy.
  • The use of organoids and animal models for the study of primary and metastatic CC.
  • The discovery in solid and liquid biopsy of new prognostic and predictive biomarkers of relapse and response to treatment in CC.
  • Early detection of the hepatic premetastatic niche through the use of artificial intelligence, integrating information generated by radiomic analysis, gut microbiota profiling and non- coding RNA expression in liquid biopsy.
  • To study of the obesity-diabetes-CC axis and, more broadly, the influence of diet-associated factors in CC, with a special focus on fatty acids and vitamin D.

The results from PRECICOLON-CM will lead to:

  • The identification of targets that foster the development of new preventive and therapeutic strategies for CC, especially metastatic CC.
  • To organize a classification of CC patients based on comorbidities such as diabetes and recurrence risk.
  • The detection of early changes in the premetastatic niche of patients, thus facilitating an early diagnosis of disseminated disease.

In summary, PRECICOLON-CM is an innovative, multidisciplinary, and high-quality proposal, whose results will contribute to a better understanding of CC and its metastases and will lead to the development of new clinical tools for an early, dynamic, and individualized treatment of CC patients. PRECICOLON-CM aims at moving towards precision medicine focusing on the individual patient instead of the disease as a whole, with the ultimate goal of improving survival rate and quality of life of CC patients.