January 27, 2022 – The CONDOR consortium, led by Pr. Antoine Italiano of the Bergonié Institute (Bordeaux, France) is one of the 17 national awardees in the fifth call for projects in Hospital-University Research in Health (RHU5), selected from the 89 applications submitted. This €30M ($34M) project will benefit from a grant of more than €9.8M ($11.1M) to implement a multi-modal project combining precision medicine and immunotherapies for the management of patients with Soft Tissue Sarcomas (STS).

STS are a group of rare and heterogeneous tumors – representing 1% and 15% of adult and childhood cancers, respectively. Despite well-conducted locoregional treatment, up to 40% of patients develop a metastatic relapse. Standard treatment at the metastatic stage has not evolved since the 1970’s. It is based on the use of chemotherapy protocols whose effectiveness is very limited, with a median survival of less than 18 months. While immunotherapy today represents a therapeutic revolution in the management of many cancers, it is to date not part of the therapeutic arsenal for patients with STS.

The CONDOR project is a consortium combining three expert centers in the management of sarcomas – including project leader Institut Bergonié, Gustave Roussy, the Centre Léon Bérard and Inserm via the Pole de Recherche Clinique and the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, as well as three French companies, each recognized for their expertise in their respective fields. These companies are Domain Therapeutics, a worldwide player in the discovery and development of anti-cancer therapies targeting G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs); Explicyte, experts in tumor and peripheral multiparametric profiling for immuno-oncology biomarker discovery and development, and Owkin, a leader in the field of digital pathology and artificial intelligence. Many of these partners have collaborated together for several years, which increases the ability for the consortium to deliver results within five years of funding