CHICAGO / Oct 07, 2024 / Business Wire / GE HealthCare announces the commencement, and its leading industrial role, in Thera4Care, an initiative aimed at revolutionizing the use of theranostics to broaden patient access in Europe. The €25.3 million project gathers 29 partners from top European academic and clinical sites, small and medium-sized enterprises, and patient advocacy groups.

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly ten million deaths in 2022. By 2050, the global burden is expected to grow to 35 million new cancer cases[1], which is due, in part, to population growth and aging. As a breakthrough approach to treating cancer, theranostics integrates imaging diagnostics and targeted therapeutics for personalized treatment of disease. It uses molecular imaging technologies to visualize tumor receptors and, if present, deliver a radioactive drug to selectively target the tumor cells.

Theranostics is already used to treat a number of late-stage prostate and neuroendocrine cancers, but it is only available in a handful of specialized centers. There is critical incremental clinical need to develop new, innovative radiotheranostics to expand clinical indications of theranostics as well as to expand its use to community centers for broader patient access.

Thera4Care aims to expand the use of theranostics in Europe by creating, implementing, and disseminating standardized, scalable methods for the production, detection, and monitoring of key theranostic isotopes, from the manufacturing and early delivery of diagnostics through to therapy. The project will strengthen the use and adoption of radiology-based diagnostics and therapies and focus on disease areas (prostate, ovarian, pancreas cancers and sarcomas), aligning with the growing significance of multi-modal radiotheranostics solutions. GE HealthCare technology already supports the steps needed to deliver on the theranostics pathway, encompassing cyclotrons and PET and SPECT imaging scanners to advanced visualization solutions, digital solutions, and consulting services.

“We are thrilled to play a leading role in Thera4Care, a unique collaboration of academic and industry partners who share a common goal to advance connected, personalized and compassionate cancer care,” said Dr. Ben Newton, GE HealthCare’s general manager for Oncology Solutions. “Our collective efforts are designed to improve healthcare system readiness for this rapidly growing field of precision medicine.”

With the help of the Thera4Care grant, GE HealthCare and the sponsors aim to:

• Expand the European network of copper producing isotope good manufacturing practices (GMP) sites using a common hardware and software platform with identical and reproducible methods.
• Develop next-generation SPECT-CT imaging scanners to enable imaging with a wide range of alpha emitters.
• Build artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled imaging and multi-modal theranostic clinical decision support with predictive analytics capabilities, initially targeting prostate cancer to ensure optimized patient outcomes.
• Enhance AI-based tumor quantitation by developing a methodology framework for personalized dosimetry.

Thera4Care brings together partners from 14 European countries and the United States. The consortium's main academic partners include Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore & Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS (Italy), Erasmus University (Netherlands), Jules Bordet Institute (Belgium), UniKlinik Essen (Germany), Gregorio Maranon General University Hospital (Spain) and Institut de Cancérologie de l'Ouest (France).

The project is co-funded under the Horizon Europe framework, and part of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European life science industries. The Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) under grant agreement #101172788 receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and COCIR, EFPIA, Europa Bío, MedTech Europe, Vaccines Europe and Thera4Care contributing partners. The grant agreement was signed on October 1, 2024, and runs through the next five years. For more information please visit the IHI website or Thera4Care project page here.

To learn more about GE HealthCare’s portfolio of Theranostics solutions, please visit gehealthcare.com or the company’s booth (Booth H20, Level 0) at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) Congress in Hamburg, Germany from October 19-23.

About GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator, dedicated to providing integrated solutions, services, and data analytics to make hospitals more efficient, clinicians more effective, therapies more precise, and patients healthier and happier. Serving patients and providers for more than 125 years, GE HealthCare is advancing personalized, connected, and compassionate care, while simplifying the patient’s journey across the care pathway. Together our Imaging, Ultrasound, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics businesses help improve patient care from diagnosis, to therapy, to monitoring. We are a $19.6 billion business with approximately 51,000 colleagues working to create a world where healthcare has no limits.

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¹ https://www.who.int/news/item/01-02-2024-global-cancer-burden-growing--amidst-mounting-need-for-services