Renowned scientists and modern business join forces in a new foundation: €10 million for personalised medicine research in Lithuania

The founder of the Foundation is Prof. Dr Habil. Arvydas Janulaitis, the pioneer of modern biotechnology in Lithuania.

Personalised medicine is rapidly gaining popularity around the world, revolutionising the traditional model of disease prevention and treatment. In order to provide Lithuanian researchers with additional opportunities to carry out research on this new model, the Future Biomedicine Fund has been established to provide funding for this research.

Personalised medicine – is a model of personalised treatment which, based on knowledge of the molecular basis of a patient’s disease profile (mutations, changes in biomolecule levels, etc.), and is used to select the most appropriate drugs to tackle the disease. This treatment is particularly valuable in the fight against cancer. The Future Biomedicine Foundation has been set up to give Lithuanian researchers more opportunities to get involved in research in this field and to accelerate progress in personalised medicine in the country.

The Foundation was established by Prof. Dr Habil. Arvydas Janulaitis, a pioneer of modern biotechnology in Lithuania, who has contributed €10 million to the Future Biomedicine Foundation.

A board of advisors was formed at the time of the establishment of the Foundation, whose members are: the Deputy Director for Science and Development of the National Cancer Institute, Prof. Sonata Jarmalaitė, Professor of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Prof. Vaiva Lesauskaite, Head of the Gastroenterology Clinic of the Lithuanian Health Sciences, Prof. Juozas Kupčinskas, the biochemist Virginijus Šikšnys, a renowned biochemist in the academic world both abroad and in Lithuania, who is best known for the discovery and development of the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, and the Director of the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology of Lithuania, Prof Gintaras Valušis.

The Foundation is also supported by such personalities as the founder of the MO Museum, former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Fermentas (now Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics), biotechnologist Prof. Viktoras Butkus, CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics, biochemist Algimantas Markauskas, and the chairman of the board of Ortho Baltic, one of the largest orthopaedic companies in Europe Dr Gediminas Kostkevičius.

Personalised medicine – what is it?

Personalised medicine is based on the principle that even the manifestation of the same disease in different patients can vary considerably in terms of the duration and course of the disease, the changes in the body and the response to treatment. This is why the choice of treatment tactics should be based on a personalised approach to each patient. Although the practice of personalised medicine has been around since antiquity, the term personalised medicine has been around for a long time.

This has led to a qualitatively radical change in the ability to assess disease-causing lesions at the molecular level. New research technologies – DNA sequencing, PCR, information tools, etc. – have made this possible, at a pace and on a scale never seen before leading to knowledge about the structure, quantity and function of the biomolecules that make up the body, and how they are altered in disease.

This has made it possible to realise a model of personalised medicine based on the patient’s molecular profile, i.e. y. genetic and other molecular or cellular features associated with the disease. They enable health professionals to assess a person’s risk of developing a specific disease in advance, tailor preventive measures, detect the disease early, make an accurate diagnosis, select the most appropriate treatments, and continue to manage the progression of the disease through ongoing monitoring. In this way, personalised medicine offers a model of disease prevention and treatment that is tailored to each individual, instead of the traditional one that focuses on the population average. The differences between these models are illustrated by one of the first applications of personalised medicine in the treatment of breast cancer.

One of the newly developed drugs was found to be effective in only 15-30% of cases, and patients who didn’t take it suffered in vain from the side-effects it caused. However, the drug continued to be used to treat breast cancer, with good results in some cases.

This example illustrates the traditional approach to the disease and its treatment, where all patients were treated as having the same disease – breast cancer. While this is true at the macro level, it is not true at the molecular level, as cancers of the same name can have different molecular profiles in different patients, which may determine the response to drugs. Later, it was discovered that the drug’s beneficial effect only occurs when the tumour cells of the patients are abundantly coated with the new drug’s target, the HER2 protein. Once this was established, treatment with the drug was adapted accordingly, and was limited to cases where an increase in HER2 protein levels was observed.

Personalised medicine, currently the most widely used in oncology, has led to significant breakthroughs in the treatment of such diseases, as in some cancers it has been possible to link the molecular profile of the cancer to the predictive efficacy of a given drug. Lithuanian experts agrees that personalised medicine is becoming the key to more effective patient care.

The personalised medicine industry is projected to continue to grow, with a value of $717 billion by 2025. Its development is strongly supported by the European Union institutions and many advanced countries around the world.

Aims to strengthen personalised medicine research in Lithuania

The founder of the Future Biomedicine Foundation, Prof. Arvydas Janulaitis, took this initiative to provide additional opportunities for Lithuanian researchers to get involved in personalised medicine research.

“The ability of the Lithuanian healthcare system to ensure quality prevention and treatment of diseases in the strategic perspective will become highly dependent not only on its financial capacity, but also on its ability to creatively apply the principles of personalised medicine in practice. This requires, among other things, biomedical research focusing on personalised medicine. I believe that Lithuania can make a more significant contribution to personalised medicine research than it is doing now, but at the moment the breakthrough is being held back by a lack of funding for such research. For this reason, the Future Biomedicine Foundation wants to help scientists, as well as the younger generation interested in this field, while emphasising that it is important for our country to become a bigger part of research in this field than it is now,” said the professor. – Expanding such research would also contribute to the development and improvement of new curricula related to personalised medicine. Moreover, it is likely that these studies will not only accelerate the progress of this new treatment model in Lithuania, but will also create the preconditions for the development of new biotechnological directions.”

Awaiting applications from researchers for funding opportunities

Researchers working on personalised medicine will be able to apply to the Future Biomedicine Fund.

Applicants are invited to complete applications – full details are provided Future Biomedicine Foundation website. Applications will be accepted until 21 September.

The Foundation also seeks to support researchers with outstanding competences. And for those living abroad if they come to work in Lithuania.

One of the first of these personalities is Artūras Petronis, a researcher at the University of Toronto in Canada. The Future Biomedicine Foundation plans to provide €1.5 million in funding for Petronius to start work in Lithuania.

About the Future Biomedicine Foundation

The Biomedicine Foundation for the Future is established in 2022. The Foundation was founded by Professor Arvydas Janulaitis, a pioneer of modern biotechnology in Lithuania, and he invited other prominent representatives of the Lithuanian scientific world and modern business to join his team. The aim of the Foundation is to provide additional opportunities for researchers to develop biomedical research in Lithuania, with a priority on science and studies related to personalised medicine.