The European Commission recently awarded nearly â¬3.7 million ($4.4 million USD) to an international initiative in the field of early diagnosis of brain cancer. The four-year program, which will be led by Plymouth University, is called An Integrated Platform for Developing Brain Cancer Diagnostic Techniques, or AiPBAND. It will focus on gliomas with specific objectives to identify new blood biomarkers for the disease, design plasmonic-based, graphene-based, and digital ELISA assay-based multiplex biosensors; and to develop a big data-empowered intelligent data management infrastructure and cloud-based diagnostic systems.
Through the initiative, which also includes partner organizations from China, an estimated 14 research fellows will be trained by academic and private sector experts from participating organizations in fields including neuroscience, engineering, healthcare, and economics. Individual research projects under the nonprofit Vitae Researcher Development Framework will be arranged into local training courses, network-wide events, secondments, and personalized career development plans with private sector involvement, according to Plymouth University.