ACCELERATE, a new IRYCIS European project focused on personalized treatments for pancreatic cancer

Monday, 20 April 2026

ACCELERATE aims to create a functional precision medicine platform with the potential to significantly contribute to the development of new treatment strategies with high clinical applicability for pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat, and to date, personalized treatment options tailored to individual patients remain unavailable. The ACCELERATE project aims to rapidly identify the most effective drug combinations for each patient through a functional precision medicine approach. Within the scope of the project, mini-tumors (organoids) will be generated in the laboratory from biopsy samples collected from patients. These organoids will be tested with different drugs to determine single-drug responses.

The project is coordinated by Michela Cortesi from Istituto Romagnolo per lo Studio dei Tumori "Dino Amadori" (IRCCS) and includes 2 more from Turkey, Öznur Taştan, Sabanci University and Ecrument Cicek, Bikent University and Julie Earl from IRYCIS. This 3-year-project has been granted by the EU TRANSCAN partnership (TRANSCAN-3 call) within the scope of the Horizon Europe R&D programme, under the call "Combination therapies against cancer: new opportunities for translational research".

At our institution, the team is led by Dr. JULIE EARL, principal investigator in Biomarkers and personalized approach to Cancer group (Area 3 - Cancer) and her team, including Drs. IGNACIO RUZ CARACUEL, MERCEDES RORÍGUEZ GARROTE, ANA GARCÍA GARCÍA DE PAREDES, CAROLINA DE LA PINTA ALONSO, LUZ DIVINA JUEZ SAEZ, JORGE VILLALON LÓPEZ and MARTA PARDO GARCÍA. The team will be involved in the molecular and histological characterization of primary tumours and their associated models, using whole-exome sequencing and RNA sequencing, as well as basal and classical tumour phenotyping. This will also include the prospective validation of combination drug regimens and the generation of a report identifying personalised and most promising responses to both single agents and combination therapies.

ACCELERATE will give visibility to the IRYCIS and its Central Support Units, as well as offer young scientists such as SONIA GARCÍA LLORENS, training opportunities at other institutions within the EU TRANSCAN Capacity Building initiatives.

ISCIII & AECC as funding agencies support projects with high potential impact in understanding, preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer.

The ACCELERATE project unites European partners to advance functional precision medicine in pancreatic cancer by integrating AI-driven drug-combination prediction with patient-derived tumour models to rapidly identify personalised, clinically actionable therapies for one of the deadliest and most treatment-resistant cancers.