DIOPTRA
Early Dynamic Screening for Colorectal Cancer via Novel Protein Biomarkers Reflecting Biological Initiation Mechanisms

The EU-funded DIOPTRA project aims to introduce a front-line screening tool that will consider risk factors and protein biomarkers for pinpointing individuals at a high risk for developing colorectal cancer (CRC). 

DIOPTRA inspires to address the aforementioned issues by incorporating new technologies for Colorectal Cancer (CRC) risk assessment, screening and progression, while providing robust evidence-based indications of CUP relationships to CRC.

We aim to build a strong evidence base toward a unified holistic protocol for primary CRC screening, applicable both to undiagnosed cancer patients (via scheduled screening recommendations) and CUP patients corresponding to the CRC phenotype. Toward this goal, we will incorporate lifestyle and environmental factors and gauge the predictive power of investigated biomarkers and gene-expression profiling, seeking to unveil molecular mechanisms of CRC development and CUP incidence. In this context, we will also examine the efficacy of network modeling and AI-based DSS for early primary CRC identification, training a set of models on large volumes of primary CRC data including in-situ and metastatic carcinomas, using the latter as a knowledge base for CUP analysis.