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FORNY20-FORNY2020

KVAL: CHRONOS – A tool for early detection of brain-tumor progression

Awarded: NOK 0.50 mill.

Brain tumors are some of the most lethal types of cancer we know. The main aim when treating these is to slow down the growth of the tumor. Despite years of research and development, treatment only works for about half of those affected, and there hasn’t been much improvement in survival rates. This is partly because we use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach when deciding on treatment, without fully considering how diverse and complex these diseases are at the time of diagnosis. One of the biggest hurdles for patients and their doctors is figuring out whether a treatment is working, and doing this as early as possible. Early on, tumors might be small, not show any symptoms, and might not be picked up by the usual tests. Today, patients might need to wait up to a year, with regular check-ups, to see if their treatment is actually doing any good. And changing drugs or treatment strategies doesn’t really help if we do it too late. For patients who might not have much time left, this waiting game just isn’t good enough. We need a new way to spot these tumors and see if our treatments are working, and we need to do it early, before the cancer shows symptoms and before we can see it with standard tests. A team of scientists at the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Oslo University Hospital might just have found a solution. They’ve developed CHRONOS, a system designed to catch brain tumors early and to quickly see if a treatment is working. CHRONOS uses regular MRI scans (it works with both old and new MRI machines) along with some really smart math and machine learning. It can pick up on changes in the brain that could be a sign of tumor growth, and it can do this up to six months sooner than our current methods. What’s more, it gives a tailor-made analysis for each patient, which could lead to much better survival rates. This QUAL project has been about making sure that CHRONOS makes good business sense. We've been talking to industry leaders, figuring out the market potential and business opportunity, and made sure that we have necessary intellectual property rights in place. The project has strengthened the confidence that CHRONOS is unique in what it can do, and we believe a substantial commercial upside can be achieved by positioning CHRONOS at the centre of a wider strategy of a new company to introduce several similar MRI-imaging solutions. We plan to plan to establish such a company within two years.

The overall long-term goal of the project is to enhance the quality of brain cancer treatment to improve patient health, physicians confidence and success rate, and hospital economy. This will be achieved by providing an automatic decision-support system for early detection of brain tumor progression and treatment response - enabling fast and accurate ascertainment with up to 6 months earlier than current practice - reducing analysis time and replacing laborious radiographic readings with response-assessment reports provided within minutes after an MRI exam - increasing robustness with unbiased, data-driven, and repeatable results

Funding scheme:

FORNY20-FORNY2020