CA24151 - Towards PERsonalized Cancer Chronotherapy (PERCC)

Chronotherapy consists in the administration of treatments according to circadian rhythms. This concept has now been taken up by many research and clinical teams worldwide. Linking them through the PERCC network will critically advance the clinical benefits of chronotherapy and the mechanisms at work, toward the personalization of treatment in patients suffering from cancer. PERCC involves multidisciplinary teams from eleven countries, thus making EU at the forefront of the field. Disruptive medical progress based on circadian rhythms has become possible because of ground-breaking discoveries in biological clocks science, and advances in technologies and algorithmics that measure, trace and model host and tumor circadian clocks. Striking clinical findings have revealed consistent time-of-day dependencies in the efficacy and tolerability of anticancer medications, with recent emphasis on immunotherapies and endocrine therapies, as well as gender- and age-related specificities. Randomized chronotherapy trials are ongoing. Clinicians, biologists, oncologists, mathematicians, statisticians, engineers, patient representatives, and regulation advisors from academic or private sectors compose five working groups in PERCC: (1)Timing in Patients; (2)Dosing Time Effects Mechanisms; (3)Circadian Biomarkers; (4)Technology and Regulations for Timing; (5)Chronotherapy in Health and Society. The five groups interact and generate a practice-changing comprehensive portfolio, involving multidisciplinary chronotherapy research, training, regulation, and patient engagement. PERCC is the first European action that integrates the circadian clock dimension into precision cancer medicine, ranging from drug discovery to experimental, artificial intelligence, technology, and clinical research, chronotherapy logistics and regulation. PERCC paves the way toward a comprehensive European vision of Circadian Medicine worldwide.