Dutch public-private partnership invests 28 million euros on research into personalized medicine

The Netherlands' three top institutes for life-science research (the BioMedical Materials program, the Center for Translational Molecular Medicine and Top Institute Pharma) have announced a joint investment of 28 million euros ($38.1 million) on innovative research targeted at bringing personalized medicine closer to reality.

The projects funded by the group will focus on developing new ways of delivering drugs to specific disease sites within the human body, thereby reducing the required doses, minimizing unwanted side effects and increasing the drugs' effectiveness. Together with the development of tailored drug therapies, the imaging guided and targeted drug delivery techniques that these newly-funded projects aim to develop, are widely regarded as one of the keys to highly personalized medicine.

The seven projects for which funding was announced yesterday afternoon are mainly aiming for therapies for cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Combined, they bring together 12 knowledge institutes and 14 industrial parties. They result from a joint call for project proposals that was initiated by the three top institutes in recognition of the fact that imaging guided and targeted drug delivery is a highly interdisciplinary area of research that leverages their individual strengths - TI Pharma in drug development, CTMM in molecular diagnostics and imaging, and BMM in biomaterials and regenerative medicine. The seven new projects are the first to encompass competencies from all three institutes.