The Horizon Europe funded project CERTAINTY (a cellular immunotherapy virtual twin for personalized cancer treatment) aims to develop a “virtual twin” that could potentially improve treatment with personalised cancer immunotherapies.

Virtual twins involve merging certain molecular and cellular characteristics of a person and their clinical progression data into a digital representation, which is regularly updated using a series of data variables. Based on comparative data from patients with similar characteristics, the virtual twin can then be used to simulate prognoses regarding the course of the disease or various treatment options.

CERTAINTY will develop modules for a corresponding virtual twin for the treatment of cancer patients with CAR-T cell therapies. This will potentially support doctors in selecting the best possible therapy in the future and could relieve the burden on healthcare systems through the more efficient use of costly drugs. The virtual twin will initially be developed as an example for myeloma. The plan is for it to comprehensively reflect the individual pathophysiology (disease characteristics and behaviour) of patients who are eligible for or undergoing cellular immunotherapies and to be updated regularly.

The CERTAINTY consortium is funded via Horizon Europe with almost EUR 10 million over the next 4.5 years.The project is led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI and the international partnership includes representatives from scientific, industry, and healthcare sectors: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Germany; University of Leipzig Medical Center, Germany; Singleron Biotechnologies GmbH, Germany; Collaborate Project Management, Germany; Myeloma Patients Europe AISBL, Belgium; TriNetX Oncology GmbH, Germany; Masaryk University, Czech Republic; Information Technology for Translational Medicine, Luxembourg; University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany; Institut Curie, France; University of Namur, Belgium; Universitair Medisch Centrum (UMC) Utrecht, The Netherlands; Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT), The Netherlands; HealthTree Foundation, USA; and Roche Pharma AG, Switzerland. For more information on CERTAINTY please view the launch press release here.

Visit Certainty website here.