Imaging, Biomarkers and Digital Pathomics for the Early Detection of Premetastatic Cancer and Precancerous Lesions Associated with Lethal Phenotypes (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)

The "Imaging, Biomarkers and Digital Pathomics for the Early Detection of Premetastatic Cancer and Precancerous Lesions Associated with Lethal Phenotypes" is a grant opportunity (R01 Clinical Trial Optional). This funding supports projects that advance medical techniques and methods for disease detection. It encourages the integration of various processes including imaging, biomarkers, digital pathomics, glycomics, metabolomics, and various other similar data procedures.

This information can derive from a variety of platforms, even ones featuring lower resolution diagnoses and systemic biomarker results. However, an emphasis is placed on using high-resolution single-cell analysis and imaging for characterizing different cell populations within a tumor. The main objectives are two-fold:

1. Improve the methods for early detection of confined premetastatic aggressive cancer.

2. Identify precancerous lesions that could lead to lethal diseases.

The grant aims to address the issue of diagnostic uncertainty that goes into clinical decisions, improve detection sensitivity and specificity, and introduce integrated multiparametric platforms. This could be achieved, for instance, by merging imaging data with multiple biomarker results, digital pathomics, and metabolic or glycomic imaging. This process could be further refined with artificial intelligence or virtual reality visualization techniques.

All projects funded under this grant will join the current Consortium for Imaging and Biomarkers (CIB) Research Program. The CIB's aims are to develop methods for early identification of lethal cancers versus non-lethal diseases, manage overdiagnosis better, and reduce the number of false positives/negatives.