Funding

Project Acronym:	PrognoChip
Project Title:	Development and establishment of microarray technology: Identification and validation of classification and prognosis markers for breast cancer
Funding Organization:	General Secretariat of Research and Technology, Ministry of Development, Greece
Programme:	3rd Community Support Programme, Operational Programme "Competitiveness", Cooperatives for Research and Technological Development in Sectors of national Priority
Project Type:	Cooperatives for Research and Technological Development in Sectors of National Priority: Health-Biomedical Research, Diagnostic and Therapeutic procedures
Project Coordinator:	D. Kafetzopoulos, IMBB, FORTH
Duration:	October 2004 – October 2007
Laboratory Budget:	138.670 €
Partners:	IMBB, FORTH (Y. Poirazi); ICS, FORTH (G. Potamias, I. Tollis, D. Plexousakis, A. Analyti, B. Moustakis, M. Tsiknakis, M. Reczko); University of Crete, Medical School (D. Tsiftsis, E. Sanidas, E. Stathopoulos); Prolopsis S.A. (S. Vassilaros) International Agency for the Research of Cancer (E. Lazaridis)
Project Objective:	The project aims to identify and validate new classification and prognosis markers for breast cancer with the deployment of DNA microarrays for gene expression profiling of breast carcinomas. Molecular markers with predictive power may have a tremendous exploitation potential but most important are going to benefit three-out-of-four women that receive aggressive chemotherapy, although they would have survived without it. During this project the synergies between Medicine, Molecular Biology and Informatics, provide with unique means to identify and evaluate the molecular signatures tumors that could outperform the currently used predictive and classification parameters. In order to extract knowledge from clinical and molecular approaches a suite of post-genomic data-processing tools and an advanced integrated information environment are developed. For Greece, a study of this scale including the establishment of a properly operated tissue bank, the development of advanced bioinformatics tools, the employment of systems biology approaches and the integration medical and genetic information, is a big leap into the post-genome era and towards the personalized medicine of the future.
Web Site:	-