The I3LUNG Consortium has gathered for the second Annual Meeting held in Barcelona, Spain. The event brings together all the international collaborators of the I3LUNG project to share the current status and progress made in this European project in Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to lung cancer.

The project, approved by the European Commission and under the Horizon Europe Program, will get 10 million euros. This program aims to promote research and innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and foster the competitiveness of the European Union. The 16 participants of the I3LUNG, located in Europe, Israel, and the United States, aim to improve and individualize the treatment of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, the subtype most common form of lung cancer. Immunotherapy (IO) is the treatment of choice for many of these patients, but only 30-50% of treated patients benefit from IO in the long term. Hence, the need to select patients who may respond to this treatment more adequately.

I3LUNG aims to create a cutting-edge tool for clinical decision-making that helps doctors and patients select the best treatment plan through AI to analyze and interpret the complexity of omics and clinical data that contribute to the response to treatment with IO. With this, it is expected to optimize patient treatment and reduce treatment costs for health systems.

In the words of Anne Marie Baird, Lung Cancer Europe (LuCE) President, “It is so important to be part of this project to ensure that there is patient advocate representation within it, because the more we know about lung cancer tumor biology, the more we know that we have to learn better how to stratify people for therapy so they have the best possible outcomes combined with the best possible quality of life.”

Also, Arsela Prelaj, Principal Investigator of the study, has shared, “In the long term, the application of this strategy will contribute to reducing the economic burden of health systems, thanks to innovative, studied and directed health care. The IHE (Swedish Institute for Health Economics) is doing an excellent job creating a profitability model that informs stakeholders about near-term budget implications and any budget reallocations that may be required to reduce unnecessary costs.”

This challenging objective will be a collaborative effort, which will include 16 partners in the I3LUNG consortium. Some among the best European and International organizations will join forces for this ambitious project: Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT, Milan, Italy) is the coordinator of the Consortium with its PI Dr. Arsela Prelaj, Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI, Milan, Italy), Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri (IRFMN, Milan, Italy), Istituto Europeo di Oncologia (IEO; Milan, Italy), ML Cube (Milan, Italy), LungenClinicGrosshansdorf GmbH (GHD, Grosshansdorf, Germany), Universitaetsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE, Hamburg, Germany), ), Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology(VHIO, Barcelona, Spain), Medica Scientia Innovation Research (MEDSIR, Barcelona, Spain & New Jersey, USA), Metropolitan Hospital (MH, Pireas, Greece), Shaare Zedek Medical Center (SZMC, Jerusalem, Israel), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL, Leuven, Belgium),The Swedish Institute for Health Economics (IHE, Lund, Sweden), The University of Chicago (UOC, Chicago, USA), Aalborg Universitet(AAU, Aalborg, Denmark), Lung Cancer Europe (LUCE, Bern, Switzerland).

For more information about this project, please visit https://i3lung.eu/