The EU-funded RESPONSIFY project will work on developing new biomarker tests that can indicate whether and how a treatment affects an individual patient, and make response prediction much easier. The main focus of the project will be on ascertaining whether certain types of treatment should be administered before or after surgery.

Researchers from Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom will work on the RESPONSIFY ('Genome-based biomarkers leading to validated molecular diagnostic tests for response prediction in breast cancer') project, which received almost €6 million under the 'Health' Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), in order to assess whether certain types of treatment should be administered before or after surgery.

By integrating information on response prediction from different breast cancer types and methodologies into biomarker tests for targeted therapies in the clinical routine setting, researchers can work towards meeting the challenges surrounding individualisation of cancer therapy based on standardised biomarker assays. Treatment that starts prior to surgery, called 'neoadjuvant therapy', involves significantly minimising the tumour preoperatively.

The team of researchers will use different genome-based strategies to identify and characterise new biomarkers as well as validate biomarkers from previous projects. In particular, they will work on developing new biomarker tests that can indicate whether and how a treatment affects an individual patient, and make response prediction much easier.