Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Within each type of cancer there are multiple subtypes that exhibit different levels of aggressive behaviour and requiredifferent management strategies. As a result, the classical ""one-size-fits-all"" approach in cancer management is not efficient.To be efficient, a cancer therapy should be personalized by using patient-specific characteristics - this is the paradigm ofpersonalized cancer medicine. MiRNAs are very promising molecular markers for accurately diagnosing cancer subtypes asevery cancer subtype is presumably associated with a unique quantitative miRNA signature. Despite all efforts to identifymiRNA signatures of cancer subtypes, there is not even a single miRNA signature validated and approved for clinical use.Discovery and validation of miRNA signatures require a miRNA analysis technology that is (i) quantitative, (ii) highlysensitive,(iii) rugged, (iv) capable of simultaneously analyzing multiple miRNAs, (v) cost-effective, and (vi) rapid. Such atechnology does not exist and this is arguably the major challenge on our way to practical use of miRNA signatures in cancermedicine. We propose to develop a Technology for Analysis of miRNA Signatures (TAmiRS), which satisfies the 6requirements and can enable the discovery and validation of miRNA signatures. We recently invented instrumental andmethodological approaches that can facilitate TAmiRS with its unique capability of measuring absolute amounts of multiplemiRNAs without calibration curves. The TAmiRS results obtained in different laboratories can be pooled together foranalysis, which is pivotal for discovery and validation of miRNA signatures requiring the analysis of thousands of patientsamples. When a miRNA signature has been validated, TAmiRS can be used for cancer subtype diagnosis in a clinicalsetup. Knowing cancer subtypes will allow physicians to choose most suitable therapies. This will be a significant steptowards personalized cancer medicine.