PP 106 Integration of clinical, histopathological, radiological and biomolecular data for prediction of oral squamous cell cancer (OSCC) recurrence: the NeoMark project's interim results

Background: Neoplastic diseases are at large the second cause of death in the western world. In the last decade, the continuous improvement in treatment protocols has substantially increased the number of patients who achieve a complete disappearance of the disease (remission) after treatment. NeoMark Project − ICT Enabled Prediction of Cancer. Reoccurrence performs research in the integration of heterogeneous clinical, laboratory, biomolecular and imaging data to develop a data integration environment facilitating multiscale and multilevel modeling, aimed at advancing models and methods currently in use to predict neoplastic reoccurrences, and to apply it to the study of oral cancer. Materials and Methods: The NeoMark concept will be tested and validated through a clinical observational study in a relevant number (100–150 patients) of OSCC cases treated with conventional surgery ± radiation and followed up for at least 12 months. Clinical and imaging data, as well as blood cell genomics will be collected at the time of diagnosis, after treatment, and during follow-up. Cancer specimen will be collected intrasurgery for histological and gene expression analysis. All patients showing a complete remission of the disease from a clinical and laboratory point of view after first line treatment will be selected for the follow-up phase. Primary end-point of the study will be the clinical evidence of recurrence during follow-up. Results: The presented interim results of the Neomark Project obtained from the Baseline Data Analysis with the current state of the dataset are quite encouraging; however, as more and more patients’ records become available, the data will be analyzed again in order to infer more reliable results. Conclusion: The main contributions that NeoMark expects to bring to research is a better understanding of the correlations between biological factors (personal for each patient and specific for OSCC) that are characteristic for oral cancer and fostering reoccurrences. The emphasis given by NeoMark partners to the evaluation and processing of integrated data from each patient and from many patients with similar tumours is expected to lead us to the identification of some prominent markers which will be experimentally analysed on a prototype medical diagnostic device based on RNA micro-array techniques and on chip-based RT-PCR technologies.