IDBS Leads Stratified Medicine Consortium

The Technology Strategy Board has selected an IDBS-led consortium to create an informatics platform to support stratified and translational medicine research and cross-organisational collaboration. The consortium consists of IDBS, hosting firm Quantix Ltd, and leading cancer centres at King’s Health Partners and Manchester Academic
Health Science Centre.

Growing healthcare costs and poor patient outcomes are driving increased interest in collaboration to support stratified medicines as a means to deliver targeted, safe and cost effective treatments. The innovative ‘Acropolis’ (Advanced Collaborative Research for Oncology Platform for Improved Outcomes, Learnings, Insight and Science) platform will provide the essential cancer informatics infrastructure to support secure stratified medicine research and collaboration, including data handling, storage, retrieval and analysis services. IDBS’ Tumour Profiling and Data Capture consortium is a £3 million project supported by £1.5 million investment by the commercial partners and
a £1.5 million grant from The Technology Strategy Board as part of the UK’s Stratified Medicines Innovation Platform (SMIP). When he announced the initiative in 2010, David Willetts MP, Secretary of State for Universities and Science said: “Tailoring medicines to patients is a key challenge for the $750 billion global pharmaceutical market. The
UK possesses many strengths needed to accelerate the innovation of stratified medicines and lead the world in developing medicines targeted at smaller subgroups of patients.”

The project is closely aligned with the Cancer Research UK Stratified Medicines project to integrate data from six experimental cancer medical centers. The SMIP will receive an investment of over £50 million of government funding over five years, funding research and development in areas such as tumour profiling to improve cancer care and developing biomarkers, for more effective drugs and diagnostics.