Colorectal cancer is a common cancer type representing the fourth most common cause of cancer related deaths.

To date, treatment decision is based on cancer stage and location of the tumour, resulting in highly variable clinical outcome.

Molmed proposes to identify molecular profiling (similar to finger printing) that can assist in the classification of the tumour, identify possible markers to measure tumour progression as well as response to therapy.

Molmed is one of the two grants awarded by the Emanuele Cancer Research Foundation.

This €980,000 project was instrumental in bringing together 6 groups of UM researchers with diverse but complimentary knowledge in various molecular and cellular techniques.

Apart from assisting in the clinical assessment, the molecular profiling has the potential to predict which tumours might develop into metastatic disease and thus the identification of cases that might require more aggressive treatment option.

This project is being led by Prof. Godfrey Grech as the Principal Investigator, with Dr Byron Baron, Prof. Anthony Fenech, Prof. Gary Hunter, Prof. Therese Hunter and Prof. Christian Scerri as Co-Investigators, together with their respective teams.