Expert System to Support Treatment Decision Making in Renal Cell Carcinoma (ESTHER)

The aim of the project is to make proteome data usable for the stratification of clear cell renal carcinoma patients and thus maximise the chances of therapeutic success.

The individual assessment of possible therapeutic benefits of immunotherapies in the context of cancer is of high clinical and socio-economic importance. However, for clear cell renal carcinoma, for example, there are no established markers for therapy response or for the risk of side effects. The hope here lies in particular in a combination of protein markers, since proteins are the actual active molecules in the body. Mass spectrometric proteomics (LC-MS/MS) has been established in research for the highly sensitive and quantitative measurement of proteins with a high degree of multiplexing. However, up to now this has hardly been used in the clinic, mainly due to technical hurdles. This is exactly where the ESTHER project comes in. A clinic-compatible workflow consisting of automated sample preparation of the tumour tissue, LC-MS/MS measurement routine, data analysis and a reporting system for proteomics including perspective therapy recommendations is being developed and validated.