Month: September 2023

STEPUPIORS PI Dr Milena Cavic participated as a lecturer at a training for writing Horizon Europe Twinning projects for participants from 12 scientific institutions from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, organized by the European Training Academy in Belgrade, on September 04, 2023, in a hybrid mode. Participants received instructions from experienced trainers on how to write a project proposal and how to prepare a budget according to the new Lump Sum methodology. Finally, they had the opportunity to meet other funded Twinning project coordinators, representing GrInShield Twinning Project from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, TwiNSol – CECs from the Faculty of Technology Novi Sad, University of Novi Sad, BIOLAWEB from the Institute for Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy.

The standard treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. To select patients who would benefit the most from this treatment, there is a need for predictive biomarkers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of clinical, pathological, radiological, inflammation-related genetic, and hematological parameters in the prediction of post-nCRT response. The obtained results showed that factors associated with favorable response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy were tumor morphology and hematological parameters which can be easily and routinely derived from initial laboratory results (NMR, eosinophil, basophil and monocyte counts) in a minimally invasive manner. Using various metrics, an aggregated score of the initial eosinophil, basophil, and monocyte counts demonstrated the best predictive performance.

Congratulations to the first author Mladen Marinkovic, MD, for a great achievement and a wonderful rest of his PhD journey ahead!