DIOPTRA - EARLY DYNAMIC SCREENING FOR COLORECTAL CANCER VIA NOVEL PROTEIN BIOMARKERS REFLECTING BIOLOGICAL INITIATION MECHANISMS

DIOPTRA旨在通过整合结直肠癌（CRC）风险评估、筛查和进展的新技术，推动结直肠癌筛查和日常医疗实践的变革。该研究旨在提供可获得的、无创的风险评估，同时为未确诊的癌症患者与CRC（即未知原发癌症（CUP））之间的关系提供强有力的循证指征。DIOPTRA的目标是为原发性CRC筛查的统一整体方案建立强有力的证据基础，该方案可应用于未确诊的癌症患者（通过定期筛查建议）和具有CRC表型的CUP患者。为了实现这一目标，我们将结合生活方式和环境因素，评估所研究的生物标志物和基因表达谱的预测能力，旨在揭示结直肠癌发展和CUP发病率的分子机制。在此背景下，我们还将研究网络建模和基于人工智能的决策支持系统（DSS）在早期原发性CRC识别中的功效。我们将使用大量原发性CRC数据（包括原位癌和转移癌）训练一组模型，并将后者作为CUP分析的知识库。

DIOPTRA aims to be the driving force for creating change in colorectal cancer screening and everyday medical practice by incorporating new technologies for colorectal cancer (CRC) risk assessment, screening, and progression. It aspires to provide accessible and noninvasive risk estimation while offering robust evidence-based indications of the relationship between undiagnosed cancer patients and CRC, known as Cancer of Unknown Primary (CUP). DIOPTRA's objective is to build a strong evidence base for a unified holistic protocol for primary CRC screening, which can be applied to both undiagnosed cancer patients (through scheduled screening recommendations) and CUP patients with the CRC phenotype. To achieve this goal, we will incorporate lifestyle and environmental factors and evaluate the predictive power of investigated biomarkers and gene-expression profiling, aiming to uncover the molecular mechanisms of CRC development and CUP incidence. In this context, we will also examine the efficacy of network modeling and AI-based Decision Support Systems (DSS) for early primary CRC identification. We will train a set of models using large volumes of primary CRC data, including in situ and metastatic carcinomas, using the latter as a knowledge base for CUP analysis.