Brussels, 25/08/2010 (Agence Europe) - The European Union has invested several million euros in medical research projects. By way of example, it has spent €3.1 million on the HAMAM project to fight breast cancer and €1.67 million in the WOUNDMONITOR project, to help people suffering from serious burns to heal more quickly.
Every year, 350,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in the European Union and the disease represents 26% of new cancer cases in women. Additionally, 17% of all women who die of cancer every year are killed by breast cancer. This percentage may be brought down with more effective screening methods, particularly to detect the most aggressive types of cancer, thus increasing the effectiveness of treatment. The HAMAM project is working on developing effective technologies for early detection. The project, which was launched in 2008, is designed to run over three years and aims to develop cooperation between scientists, clinicians and IT professionals in order to collate all available data into a single joint database. More specifically, the project aims to develop clinical software making it possible to centralise image and quantitative data and to combine them with personalised tumour risk profiles, on the basis of genetic information and the family history of patients. HAMAM follows on from two other projects funded by the EU: SCREEN and SCREEN-TRIAL, which have enabled considerable progress in diagnosing breast cancer in Europe, thus putting the continent at the top of the table internationally in the sector of digital diagnostics systems for mammography.
A further project funded by the EU aims to speed up the healing process in the event of major burns. More than 4,000 people die in the European Union every year as a result of accidents caused by fire and several thousand more receive hospital treatment for burns. Older people and young children are particularly at risk in this type of accident. Early diagnosis and treatment of infections are crucial in healing, but despite progress in medicines, it can take up to three days to identify the type of bacteria present in a wound. A diagnosis is an absolute prerequisite in selecting the right treatment. Traditionally, medical students were taught to recognise bacterial infections according to their characteristic smell. German, British, Italian and Lithuanian clinicians and researchers who took part in the WOUNDMONITOR project followed the same approach, but with the assistance of the latest information and communication technologies. They developed an instrument which is capable of recognising the type of bacteria using the small quantities of volatile gases they produce. There are three categories of bacteria: staphylococcus, streptococcus and pseudomonas and these are responsible for some 80% of bacterial infections present in burns. This complex but very compact instrument has been tested in a hospital in Manchester (United Kingdom) and in a hospital in Kaunas (Lithuania). The results were highly satisfactory and the researchers gave a positive assessment to the risk level of the instrument. Since then, a number of commercial companies have expressed an interest in the WOUNDMONITOR and negotiations are underway to develop the commercial use of the instrument. The HAMAM project, the WOUNDMONITOR and several other great research successes in the field of ICT funded by the EU will be presented at “ICT 2010”, the biggest European event in the field of ICT research, which will be held in Brussels from 27 to 29 September. (I.L./transl.fl)