dr. Jeanine Prompers of UMC Utrecht and her colleagues have received a grant of 3.6 million euros for the Perspectief program MAESTRO. With the money, the researchers can develop a technology that predicts at an early stage whether a treatment for cancer or type 2 diabetes will be successful.
Cancer treatments are not always effective, because a certain treatment works for one person, but not another. It is often only a long time after a patient has started a treatment that it becomes clear whether the treatment is successful. This also applies to so-called lifestyle interventions to prevent diseases linked to obesity, such as type 2 diabetes. For example, not everyone who is overweight benefits from the same type of diet.
dr. Jeanine Prompers and her colleagues say they want to improve the prospects of these people. “We are also looking for ways to reduce healthcare costs. In the MAESTRO project we will develop a technique that can indicate at an early stage whether a treatment will work. We focus on different patient groups: women with breast cancer, patients with liver metastases and people with pre-diabetes.”
Technical
So how does that technology work? That’s a bit of a technical story, but the bottom line is that the technology maps metabolic processes in the body. This concerns, for example, how active certain cells are, how much energy they use and how quickly they divide. “You can measure that with certain metabolic markers, a type of marker,” explains Prompers. “We do this with a special MRI scanner with a very high sensitivity: the 7-Tesla MRI. Changes in metabolism during a treatment or lifestyle intervention can predict the response very early. In this project we will investigate this for various applications.”
The technology is being developed by Amsterdam UMC, Maastricht UMC+ and UMC Utrecht. Prompers is the program leader. “This fair means a lot to me,” she says. “It allows me to collaborate with MRI experts, physicians and experts to develop metabolic imaging and directly apply it during patient treatment. We also work with companies that help develop and market our metabolic imaging technology, and last but not least, with the patients themselves! This way we can really make an impact.”
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