Overview of the COLOSSUS Project
COLOSSUS aims to provide new and more effective stratification tools and therapeutic interventions, specifically tailored to MSS RAS mt mCRC patients. mCRC is a heterogenous disease with high prevalence and significant economic impact both within a European and global context. COLOSSUS aims to deliver novel concepts for disease-mechanism based patient stratification in MSS RAS mt mCRC to address the need for stratified or personalised therapeutic interventions in this setting.
To achieve its aims the consortium will integrate multidimensional and longitudinal ‘omics data to help identify new MSS RAS mt specific subtypes with unique signalling dependences. We will harness the power of systems biomedicine, network analysis and computational modelling to identify new actionable pathways, biomarkers and targets across subtypes and to predict patient outcomes. These targets will be interrogated in state of the art pre-clinical patient derived xenograft studies. Newly described MSS RAS mt classifiers will be validated as novel patient stratification tools within the COLOSSUS trial. SME partners aim to develop clinically relevant and commercially viable assays for stratification of MSS RAS mt patients based on novel classifiers. The impact of assays on CRC associated healthcare costs will further be assessed.
We will disseminate our results and reach clinicians, researchers and related projects, industry and SMEs, government and policy-makers, the media, the general public, patients and patient representative groups. We will also consider regulatory aspects and commercialisation opportunities, in particular for participating SMEs.
Our Research Plan
Our work in COLOSSUS is broken into the following different work packages:

Illustration of the COLOSSUS Work plan
Innovation
COLOSSUS aims to deliver and employ numerous different innovations. These will include: