As many of our readers will already know, the EHERCC and The EHE Foundation have been jointly funding ongoing collaborative research between the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT) in Milan, and the Royal Marsden Hospital (RMH) and Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London. This research involves a number of projects including identifying EHE biomarkers, seeking to develop new PDX models, drug screening, and building a broad radiography library to allow experts to examine EHE images in detail with the hope of identifying new diagnostic and prognostic features. This research is led by Professor Robin Jones and Dr Paul Huang in London, Dr Stacchiotti and Dr Pasquali in Italy, and Dr Razak in Canada.
Underpinning all this work is the creation of a clinical observational study where INT and RHM have enrolled 50 EHE patients so far. Each patient is being treated under a standard protocol, creating a significant, high quality study of the disease which we hope will inform ongoing thinking regarding EHE research and treatment. So why is this project under review? Hugh Leonard explained:
“This ongoing important research project, which has also been joined by the PRO-CARE research team in Canada, is building a significant EHE resource base. This observational study will provide us with a lot of significant information about the biology of EHE which can be used in many ways. We are for example currently talking to the EMA in Europe about a label extension of sirolimus to include EHE, and the information from this study is likely to be an important component of that label-extension process. Ideally the EHE Group now want to expand the study cohort to 100 patients over a number of additional years, but of course this will require additional funds. We are therefore undertaking a review of the project to support new funding.”
We hope to bring further information about this important project in the near future.