Our Global Clinical Network: Data quality starts in the operating room
Tumor tissue begins to change as soon as it loses its blood supply. That is why much of the quality of multi-omics data is decided in the operating room, before any data is generated. Our Global Clinical Network is organized exactly around that fact. Partner hospitals and oncology institutes in North America, Europe, and Asia collect matched tumor and normal tissue, together with clinical data, for our proprietary database IndivuType® under the same standard operating procedures, with a median cold ischemia time of 12 minutes. This standardization keeps samples comparable across hospitals and continents, the foundation of reliable precision oncology research.
In October 2026, we visited our partners in Rome, Madrid, and Seoul to talk about collection standards, ongoing studies, and the next steps in our joint research.
Indivumed’s Global Clinical Network at a glance
- Footprint: clinical partners in the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea
- Protocol: standard operating procedures developed with surgeons, oncologists, and pathologists in the network
- Tissue quality: median of 12 minutes cold ischemia time from resection to stabilization
- Data depth: Multi-omics profiles linked to up to 320 clinical datapoints per patient and up to 10 years of follow-up
One protocol, three continents
Trained staff carry out our standard operating procedures on site, as part of the clinical team. Each sample comes with clinical data from the same patient, from diagnosis to long-term outcomes: for a comprehensive picture of the disease - as close as possible to in-situ biology. Combined with the multi-omics profile, this multimodal view lets us compare one patient's tumor with a whole cohort in IndivuType®. Shared disease mechanisms become visible, and with them, potential new cancer targets.
Where patients come from matters too. Genetics and environment differ between populations, and so do cancer development and treatment response. Partners in seven countries bring that range into our data.
Rome: years of joint research with Tor Vergata
With the University of Rome Tor Vergata, we do more than collecting samples. Our teams have worked and published together for years. On this visit, we went through current projects and agreed on how to extend the partnership.
Prof. Dr. Gerry Melino, Director of the Tor Vergata Oncoscience Research Centre and a member of our Onco AI-Med Advisory Board, explains:
“Precision medicine tailored to the patient requires detailed molecular information. With Indivumed and IndivuType®, we have exactly that, and it helps us discover and develop new diagnostics and therapeutics.”
A recent example is a joint study in Molecular Oncology: a multi-omic characterization of a consensus molecular subtype 1 (CMS1) colorectal cancer with a dampened immune response (Concetti et al., 2025). It shows how an individual patient's molecular profile can be read against a larger colorectal cancer cohort.
:format(webp):quality(90))
Madrid: clinical research with Fundación Jiménez Díaz
The Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid has been part of our network since 2020. Ahead of the ESMO Congress 2026 in Madrid, we met Prof. Jesús García-Foncillas and his team. He is Principal Investigator of our joint clinical study and also a member of our Onco AI-Med Advisory Board.
We looked at where the study stands and talked about further joint projects. The team in Madrid runs clinical research itself, so the people collecting samples know what the data will be used for in the longrun. Additionally, the clinical perspective helps us match novel targets with the right patients and with a modality that works in clinical practice – from early on.
:format(webp):quality(90))
Seoul: Why fly in to talk about tumor tissue?
Our Founder and CEO Prof. Dr. Hartmut Juhl and Nina Gabelia, Vice President Clinical Network, traveled as well to the Yonsei Cancer Center in Seoul. Their host was Prof. Dr. Sun Young Rha, Chief of Medical Oncology and, like her colleagues in Rome and Madrid, a member of our Onco AI-Med Advisory Board.
On the agenda: standardized sample collection, cold ischemia time, and joint scientific projects. A protocol on paper is easy. Making it routine in a surgical department on another continent takes conversations like this one.
In Seoul, we also met Prof. Dr. Soonmyung Paik, Director of the Yonsei Biomedical Research Institute. After biomarker research at Georgetown University, he moved to the NSABP in Pittsburgh. There, he helped develop Oncotype DX, a 21-gene test that shows which breast cancer patients benefit from chemotherapy. His work is a reminder of what molecular patient selection can achieve.
Why this matters for cancer target discovery
Translatability starts with the tissue, as von der Heyde et al. (2024) show for cold ischemia time and drug target discovery. A target hypothesis is only as reliable as the samples behind it, which is why data provenance usually comes up early in due diligence. For data from our network, the answer leads back to one documented collection protocol, carried out by trained staff in each partner hospital.
Because tissue is stabilized quickly, phosphorylation signals are largely preserved, so the data indicate which pathways are active in a tumor, not only which genes are altered or expressed. Each multi-omics profile is linked to up to 320 clinical datapoints and up to 10 years of follow-up, so molecular findings can be read against treatment and outcome. That is the starting point for target prioritization and patient selection.
Consistency matters even more as target identification becomes AI-driven: a model trained on altered samples learns the artifacts, not the biology. In our network, consistency comes from routine: trained staff on site and long-standing partnerships keep the protocol in daily use. That gives our bioinformatics and lab teams a reliable basis for early target and drug discovery.
And that is where our Patient × Target × Modality approach starts: with the patient.