Project Overview

PROJECT

Project Summary

Ischemic brain and heart: increasing common issues

The management of ischemic stroke (IS) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is now very similar and consists primarily on achieving rapid and complete reperfusion of ischemic tissue by endovascular procedures.

Gaps and needs in current care for IS and AMI patients

Given the mismatch between medical resources and the growing number of patients affected by these two diseases, careful patient selection and personalized care are required. In this regard, imaging during diagnosis workup plays a central role to assess tissue viability, tissue at risk of infarction and the risk of early clinical deterioration. In the subacute phase, imaging could assess reperfusion injuries involving inflammatory and microthrombotic mechanisms that negatively affect the fate of injured brain or myocardium and could be targeted by new specific treatments. Unfortunately, this is made difficult by inappropriate image processing technology, with lack of robustness, lack of accurate scientific validation and with prohibitive computing time for clinical practice and offering only a qualitative analysis of tissues.

Optimized MR imaging: a crucial asset to improve the care to AMI and IS patients

Improved magnetic resonance (MR) imaging could fill gaps and provide a mean to better identify critical markers of risk and to select the patients who will benefit the most from targeted protective therapies. Translational development of such imaging methods requires collaboration between basic scientists (to provide and characterize pathophysiology of experimental models), clinicians (to recruit patients and identify clinically-meaningful targets) and the industry (to develop innovative imaging and post-processing tools with clinical-grade validation). The MARVELOUS project falls within this framework. It brings academic expertise in biology of ischemia reperfusion injury, in cardiology, vascular neurology, imaging and health economics together with the private company Olea Medical, recognized for its worldwide competence in the development of powerful MR image post-processing systems. This synergy will produce an innovative MR image post-processing software platform allowing an improved evaluation of cardiac/brain damage, hence a more standardized evaluation of each patient‘s risk that is the prerequisite for a personalized cost-effective strategy of care. Further, MARVELOUS will examine how this innovative product may impact health economics and how it might in a near future contribute to modify our in-hospital organization of care for AMI and IS patients.

This project is a health-related university hospital research project (RHU) funded under PIA “Programme Investissements d’Avenir”.

It was first coordinated by Professor Michel Ovize at the University of Lyon and from 2020 by Professor Norbert Nighoghossian and gathers 4 academic partners, Hospices Civils de Lyon and 2 SMEs. The project has started October 1^st, 2016 for a length of 66 months (5 years). The total budget amounts 17,6M€ for an ANR awarded funding of 5,5M€.