Good practice:

Research Campus M²OLIE - Mannheim Molecular Intervention Environment

The scientific focus of the research campus M²OLIE is to improve therapy options for oligometastatic tumour patients. The M²OLIE closed-loop-process from diagnosis to therapy leveraging digital and automation will result in better medical outcome, higher precision, efficiency, cost savings, and patient centricity. The public-private partnership focuses on establishing an intervention environment for minimally invasive cancer treatment within the framework of a one-stop shop. Improved individualised therapeutic procedures in the fields of interventional radiology, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy as well as supporting imaging methods, patient-specific radio-pharmaceuticals, and robot-based intervention assistants are developed in a multidisciplinary environment at the University Medical Centre Mannheim with more than 25 partners from industry, research and public life. Procedures are developed within the framework of 3 collaborative projects with over 110 scientists dedicated to the establishment of a process model and a clinical trial management system to monitor and improve organizational processes. Within the close project network, industry partners benefit from practitioners‘ feedback on the use of their products, while practitioners and researchers are able to address a specific treatment holistically. For cancer patients but also for public authorities in health care, the project offers a promising alternative to existing therapeutic procedures.

M²OLIE is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research with up to 2 Mio. €/year as part of the “Research Campus – Public-Private Partnership for Innovation” competition. The project entered the 2nd funding phase in June 2019 for five years with the option of a 3rd five year phase.

The already achieved milestones (i. e. establishment of a special intervention room with a robotic system for biopsy, of a GMP-compliant lab for production of innovative radiopharmaceuticals, and of several steps of the process management for the closed-loop) will be assembled to treat the first patients in the closed-loop-process at the end of the current funding period. This closed-loop-process will be extended to other indications to achieve a continuity of the research campus in 10 years.

M²OLIE is a successful PPP involving medtech companies and academic institutions linked to university hospitals and backed by long-term public funding. 21 industrial and 6 academic partners work together under one roof. Scientific success and the development of exploitable results (e. g. medical devices) are targeted equivalently. Therefore, research and IP rights (free academic research and teaching, patents, licencing, exclusive commercialisation rights) are clearly regulated in the master cooperation agreement and in specific work package contracts. The project framework of several work packages woven into one consistent process can be a model for organizing complex projects with a holistic ambition. As improvements in therapeutic options for oligometastatic cancer patients are an urgent need for all European regions, there is the great chance to transfer the closed-loop-process as a whole but also single medical devices and process components developed in M²OLIE to other hospitals.