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The Europe’s beating cancer plan (EBCP) is set out to tackle the entire disease pathway of cancer - from prevention to quality of life of cancer patients and survivors — with the aim to improve prevention, early detection, access to diagnosis and treatment.

The CAN.HEAL consortium addressed two of the EBCP’s initiatives: ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ and ‘Genomics for Public Health’. Genomics has become increasingly relevant in cancer medicine. Next-generation sequencing technologies and analytical approaches are now being introduced into the clinic with a multitude of clinical applications, ranging from identifying individual targetable genetic alterations to monitoring treatment response. Within the CAN.HEAL consortium organisations from 17 EU countries jointly built on ongoing studies to promote the application of genomics to improve diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients as well as to improve our understanding of the individual susceptibility to develop a certain type of cancer.

The UKE and ELBS led Work Package 11 , focusing on implementation liquid biopsy assays in clinical practice. We developed recommendations, guidelines, and best practices to move the clinical implementation of liquid biopsy forward and performed external quality assurance within the ELBS consortium.

De Jager et al. Reporting of molecular test results from cell-free DNA analyses: expert consensus recommendations from the 2023 European Liquid Biopsy Society ctDNA Workshop. E.EBioMedicine. 2025 Apr;114:105636. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.105636.

Deliverables and publications

The ELBS invites all its members to attend in the annual general assembly (GA) of our network on November 3rd & 4th in Madrid, Spain.

The GA will be providing detailed insights into the activities and plans of the network across its various working groups, the introduction of new members, collaborative project presentations, young investigator sessions and ample time to network.

We are looking forward to welcoming all members to the ELBS GA 2025!

For any questions, feel free to contact the PMO anytime.

Kind regards,

Klaus Pantel (ELBS Chair), Svenja Schneegans-Murano and Josef Vaas (Project Management)

ISEV-ELBS Intersociety Working Group

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We are pleased to announce that we have founded an Intersociety Working Group together with ISEV.

This working group aims to support the clinical translation of EV-related biomarker research.

HISTORY
The ISEV-ELBS Intersociety Working Group was founded in 2023. ELBS is the European Liquid Biopsy Society, and this working group aims to improve the quality of biobanks used for clinical biomarker exploration, which includes EV-related biomarker research. In the last 20 years, there has been a revolution in early diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic efficacy of diseases based on information collected from non-invasive liquid biopsies.

VISION AND AIMS
Together the ISEV-ELBS Intersociety Working Group aims to foster collaboration between the two societies with the goal of promoting reproducibility of liquid biopsy-EV preparation and analysis and encouraging discussion on EV research and its applications in liquid biopsy approaches. Together the two societies will co-host meetings, develop collaborative initiatives and report developments in the EV-liquid biopsy field. This will foster the development of novel EV biomarkers and their translation to the clinic.

MEET THE CHAIR

Caterina Nardella Senior Scientist and Programme Manager, Laboratory of Computational and Functional Oncology
Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology (CIBIO)
University of Trento, Italy
caterina.nardella@unitn.it

An Hendrix Full professor, Laboratory of Experimental Cancer Research, Department of Human Structure and Repair, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Principal investigator, Cancer Research Institute Ghent, Ghent, Belgium Founder and President of the Belgian Society for Extracellular Vesicles
an.hendrix@ugent.be

Carlos Salomon Gallo
Professor
Director, UQ Centre for Extracellular Vesicle Nanomedicine
UQ Centre for Clinical Research
Faculty of Medicine
The University of Queensland, Australia
c.salomongallo@uq.edu.au

Julia V. Burnier Director, Liquid Biopsy Unit
Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre,Montréal, Canada
julia.burnier@mcgill.ca

NEWS: work in progress

OUTPUTS: work in progress

EVENTS: work in progress

Logo UCIPredict

Team UCIPredict
C. Jerónimo, M. Dueñas, G. Güllü Amuran, K. Lundberg

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Circulating tumour microenvironment components as Urothelial Cancer Immunotherapy Response Predictors (UCIPredict)

UCIPredict is an EU Transcan project coordinated by ELBS member Marta Dueñas (CIBER, Spain) together with multiple partner institutions across Europe. The project is intended to develop an innovative and reliable urine and blood-based biomarker test for response prediction to immunotherapy (IT) and tumour recurrence, using non-invasive techniques measuring circulating biomarkers from tumour and tumour microenvironment for urothelial cancer (UC). The main objective of this project is to identify molecular and cellular signatures from urine and blood samples to develop a robust and reproducible laboratory tool for personalized therapy and IT response prediction in UC patients. UCIPredict will provide a non-invasive innovative tool for patient prognosis and IT response in UC. Its implementation in clinical practice for IT response prediction would increase the rate of patients receiving the best clinical benefit.

UCIPredict