The consortium of companies will use the EU’s money to support the development of personalized therapies for breast and rectal cancers.
Horizon 2020 is the biggest ever EU Research and Innovation program with almost €80B made available to take exciting science to the market. The initiative has awarded a €6.3M grant to a group of companies brought together by the tech giant, Philips. The money will support their 4-year research project, ‘Liquid biopsies and IMAging for improved cancer care (LIMA)’, which hopes to improve the accuracy of breast and rectal cancer characterization by combining liquid biopsies and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Philips hopes that this could help clinicians to offer better, more personalized therapies to patients.
Two companies selected for the Philips consortium are Stilla Technologies and Angle. Stilla, based in Paris, develops next-generation genetic tests using its digital PCR solution: the Naica System. and will use the money to apply its platform to the detection of breast and rectal cancer detection. Angle, whose stock price was boosted by 7.5% following the news, is a leader in the liquid biopsy field thanks to its Parsortix system. The company will receive £400,000 for its system to be used during the study to harvest circulating tumor cells.
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