Led by Liesbeth de Vries (UMCG) and with major contributions from Guus van Dongen (Imaging Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC), John Haanen (NKI/AVL) and Peter de With (TU Eindhoven), the FORESIGHT consortium receives a grant of no less than €9 million from Health~Holland. The project focuses on cutting-edge drug development research supported by advanced molecular imaging.
The expected increase in oncological, autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases poses a growing challenge for health care. New targeted drugs offer hope, but the development process is slow, expensive and has a high risk of failure. FORESIGHT aims to transform this process using molecular imaging.
The program is betting on nuclear and optical imaging techniques to visualize and quantify drug distribution in the body. This makes it possible to map tissue properties down to the cellular level and develop biomarkers that help predict drug response. This allows drugs to be developed more quickly and cheaply, with a greater chance of success and effectiveness for individual patients.