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Understanding Lung Cancer related risk factors and their Impact Assessment

LUCIA is a project funded by the European Union Horizon Europe Programme. It started in January 2023 and will last 48 months. It brings together a consortium of 20 partners – academia, associations, hospitals, NGOs, research and technological organisations, and industry – led by TECHNION (Israel Institute of Technology), from six EU countries and three associated countries. Based on a multi-stakeholder approach, their expertise covers all parts of the process: technology provider, clinical validation, biological understanding, ethics and legal management, policy making, communication and dissemination.

Lung Cancer (LC) is the cancer killing the most worldwide. Though tobacco smoking has long been recognised as the major risk factor, many cases cannot be explained by this reason. In addition, Low-Dosed Computed Tomography, the most common method of LC screening, has remained very little used, with low reduction of lung cancer mortality.
In this context, the key aim of LUCIA is to constitute a toolbox for discovering and understanding new risk factors that contribute to LC development. The toolbox encompasses the analysis of three complementary aspects that feed into each other:

Personal risk factors (i.e., a person’s exposure to chemical pollutants and behavioral and lifestyle factors),
External risk factors (i.e., urban, built and transport environments, social aspects, and climate), and
The cellular processes (i.e., changes in genetics, epigenetics, metabolism, and ageing).

The impact of the risk factors and the associated biological responses will be validated in three clinical use cases: general population risk assessment and screening, precision screening of high-risk populations, and digital diagnostics. The resulting evidence within LUCIA will be translated into policymaking recommendations, to implement them in a screening program for LC.