P04.08 GLIOTRAIN: Exploiting Glioblastoma intractability to address European research training needs in translational brain tumour research, cancer systems medicine and integrative multi-omics

BACKGROUND: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent, aggressive and lethal of all brain tumours. 85% of patients die within two years. Thus, new treatment options are urgently required. To address this deficit, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) is leading a major new programme “GLIOTRAIN” (www.gliotrain.eu) that aims to identify new therapeutic strategies, while implementing state of the art genomics and systems medicine approaches to unravel resistance mechanisms. Here, we introduce the GLIOTRAIN initiative which received €3.8 million in September 2017 from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The GLIOTRAIN consortium comprises 22 organisations (RCSI, University of Stuttgart, VIB, Luxemburg Institute of Health, Erasmus Medical Centre, The ICM Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord, GeneXplain GmbH, Agilent Technologies, ITTM Solutions, The International Brain Tumour Alliance, Cancer Trials Ireland, Champions Oncology Ltd., In silico Biotechnology, YUMAB GmbH, Mimetas B.V, Pepscope B.V, Teva Nederland B.V, CarThera, Oncurious N.V, University of Luxembourg, KU Leuven, University Medical Center Göttingen) across 8 countries and includes leading academics, clinicians, private sector and not-for-profit partners across the fields of brain tumour biology, multi-omics, drug development, clinical research, bioinformatics, computational modelling and systems biology. Fifteen GLIOTRAIN sub-projects will employ systems medicine, integrative multi-’omics and translational cancer biology platforms accessing clinically relevant models and patient data-sets. RESULTS: GLIOTRAIN will identify and interrogate novel therapeutic strategies for application in GBM, while simultaneously implementing state of the art next generation sequencing to unravel disease resistance mechanisms. The programme will implement systems-based analysis of known contributors of disease progression, and will further perform unbiased molecular profiling and computational modelling. CONCLUSION: GLIOTRAIN will address currently unmet translational research and clinical needs in the neuro-oncology field by interrogating innovative therapeutic strategies and improving the mechanistic understanding of disease resistance. Funding: GLIOTRAIN (www.gliotrain.eu) has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme (Grant Agreement No. 766069).