operating grant : quantitative imaging for responses to cancer therapies
this funding opportunity has been developed in response to a key recommendation from the 2011 canada/uk/us workshop entitled “linking ’omics to patient care through imaging: exploring a global/international program in cancer imaging”. the workshop was organized jointly by the institute of cancer research (icr) of the canadian institutes of health research (cihr), cancer research uk (cruk), and the national cancer institute (nci) of the us national institutes of health (nih), and hosted by the canadian high commission in london, uk in july 2011. the workshop report is available on request. specifically this funding opportunity addresses an identified international need for physical standardization in the cancer-imaging field - from image acquisition, processing, segmentation and feature extraction, to clinical nomenclature and methods of recording follow-up.
the international cancer imaging community share a common interest in applying, validating and integrating new imaging technologies for cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, planning and monitoring. a new generation of imaging technologies is poised to play a key role in both discovery research and pre-clinical and clinical investigations, particularly with respect to understanding the molecular basis of cancer, and as a tool for physicians to apply personalized medicine approaches. an example of the latter is the emerging role of imaging in adaptive therapy trials, where molecular-based imaging strategies can be used to non-invasively monitor the specific biochemical pathways that are key to achieving successful outcomes. the potential value of modern medical imaging methods has created a need for mechanisms to develop, translate and disseminate emerging imaging technologies and, ideally, to quantitatively correlate them with other related laboratory methods, such as the genomics and proteomics analyses required to support clinical decisions, including genomic pathology. one strategy to meet these needs efficiently and cost effectively is to develop an international network to share and reach consensus on best practices, imaging protocols, common databases, and open science strategies, and to collaboratively seek opportunities to leverage resources wherever possible. the qin is one example of this planned collaborative effort between cihr and nci.
the nci has already established a quantitative imaging network (qin) that currently has 17 research teams (nodes) across the us. the goal of this current initiative is to establish up to two canadian teams as an integral part of qin. further international efforts are being coordinated with the nci center for global health (cgh) where cgh is actively involved in the inclusion of additional international teams in the qin. this partnership between us and canadian researchers will leverage nci resources to promote research on quantitative imaging for prediction and measurement of tumor response to cancer therapies in clinical trial settings, with the overall aim of facilitating clinical decision making and personalized medicine approaches.
the mission of the qin is to improve the role of quantitative imaging for clinical decision making in oncology by the development and validation of data acquisition, analysis methods, and tools to tailor treatment to individual patients and to predict or monitor the response to drug or radiation therapy. this mission complements nci-wide efforts to promote adaptive clinical trials within the broader context of precision or personalized medicine. the goal of qin is to build an open science consensus on the development of quantitative imaging methods and provide a framework for comparison and eventual commercial dissemination of these methods into multicenter clinical trial settings.
the qin network is currently comprised of 17 us-based research teams; an executive committee that addresses outreach to the scientific and industry community; a coordinating committee designed to actively manage the qin network and bring consensus to problems that are common to all the research teams; and four separate trans-qin working groups: data acquisition, image analysis & performance metrics, bioinformatics, and clinical trial design.
the objective of this funding opportunity is to support canadian research teams as an integral part of the nci qin. the development, on an international scale, of advanced quantitative methods that may potentially reduce the physical measurement uncertainty across different image collection platforms has the potential to reduce the number of patients required for a clinical drug trial thus reducing the overall size of the clinical trial for a given statistical outcome. the impact of the latter will be dependent on the proposed clinical protocol and class of therapy. by becoming a member of the qin, canadian researchers will have the opportunity to participate in the development of advanced quantitative imaging methods that may potentially improve the means to predict response to therapy or measure the response to therapy at an earlier time frame, thus permitting a quantitative means to implement adaptive therapy trials, an example of precision or personalized medicine. the sharing of research resources across the qin, including the canadian sites, will help accelerate the timeframe for wide adoption of these methods in us and canadian clinical trials. canadian researchers will also benefit from the qin open science model as they will be able to participate in the translational science pathway for evaluation of these methods and will have timely access to newly developed quantitative methods that will serve as technical resources to support canadian-sponsored imaging and related drug or radiation therapy trials. if canadian qin sites are successfully established then it is the intention that cihr will have a place on the qin executive committee to ensure that qin is viewed as an international network, that can support clinical trials in the us and canada. as the qin requires sharing of resources to help develop consensus on quantitative imaging methods, but specifically permits each qin investigator to maintain the ip of the clinical decision methods developed, there will be no ip barriers for canadian participants.