PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The WIN Consortium (www.winconsortium.org) in personalized cancer medicine today announced it has received an European Union Framework Program 7 (EU FP7) grant of 3 million Euros to conduct WINTHER (WINTherapeutics), WIN’s first personalized medicine clinical trial. Based on a systems biology concept, WINTHER is the first clinical trial offering a choice of therapy guided by each patient’s biology for all the patients in the study.

“The EU Health Directorate awarded the grant for WINTHER for its scientific merit and trial design” said Dr. Vladimir Lazar, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of WIN Consortium. Significant additional funding for WINTHER has been committed by Pfizer Novartis, and Millennium.

WINTHER represents a breakthrough concept compared to current oncology practice, which at best offers personalized, biology-guided therapy to the 30-40% of patients who harbor known tumor DNA aberrations, and for whom targeted therapy is available. WINTHER’s novel approach comprehensively investigates DNA, and RNA from dual biopsies of tumor and matched normal tissue of the same histology for each patient. This data is examined by an algorithm-driven bioinformatics tool to provide a predictive efficacy score for all existing drugs for each individual patient.

WINTHER Global PI Jean-Charles Soria stated, “In WINTHER, for all patients without known oncogenic events of the tumor DNA (representing about 60% of the population), the choice of therapy will be guided by analyses of RNA of the tumor versus RNA of the normal matched tissue. The results of DNA and RNA analyses will be investigated by a bioinformatics program capable of determining a predictive score of efficacy for existing anticancer therapies (standard or targeted, expensive or not) for a given patient.”

WINTHER is an academic and international study conducted at six WIN Consortium member cancer centers, representing five countries: Institut Gustave Roussy (France); Vall d’Hebron (Spain); Chaim Sheba Medical Center (Israel); Segal Cancer Center (Canada); UCSD Cancer Center (USA); and MD Anderson Cancer Center (USA). WINTHER technology partners and bioinformatics include Agilent Technologies, Foundation Medicine, Ariana Pharma and Ben Gurion University. Patient enrollment is underway in three countries, with study completion scheduled for 2015.

“The WINTHER trial demonstrates the WIN Consortium’s goal of catalyzing global, multi-sector collaboration to advance the most promising innovations in personalized cancer medicine “ said Catherine Bresson, Director of Operational Team. Initiated in 2010 with leadership from Institute Gustave Roussy (France) and MD Anderson Cancer Center (USA), WIN represents a global collaboration of leading academic, industry, and non-profit organizations. WIN is a non-profit, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris.