When Inspire2Live organised its first Annual Congress in 2011, José Baselga opened with the following statement:

We are not meant to be here for 1- or 2-months’ life extension. We can do better!

Inspire2Live set up DEEP Diagnostics: Decision Excellence for Each Patient through Diagnostics for patients with pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma. We combine Whole Genome Sequencing, liquid biopsy, organoids, organ on a chip, tissue culture and mathematical game theory depending on the disease and the choice of the patient and oncologist. On January 25 2022, we submitted our application for funding to the EU4Health program. 

 We work with off-patent medicines and want Drug Repurposing to be part of our study. A lot of low-cost medicines work, or would appear to work, on diseases that the drugs were not initially developed for. This is important in low- and middle-income countries enabling the use of safe, effective and inexpensive medicines for treatments that are not normally available in these countries. We combine sequencing and drug screening. Inspire2Live is much in favor of sequencing. It was our organisation that tabled and won a motion in the Dutch parliament requesting the health insurance reimbursement of Whole Genome Sequencing. 

Inspire2Live is also in favour of drug screening. In 2011 we brought together a group of brilliant scientists, including Hans Clevers, who discussed organoids for the first time and which later led to many trials. Organoids are not available for glioblastoma and, for this reason, we work with the tissue culture technique from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. 

We will implement true personalised medicine. The whole world talks about it, but when you take a closer look at all the initiatives, you see that they are always drug-centric i.e.

We have a medicine, let’s find a group of patients that fits with this medicine.

Inspire2Live changes this because our approach is patient-centric i.e.

Let’s try and find the best treatment for this patient with this genetic defect at this moment in time.

We move towards a patient-centric approach. This is why we are convinced that we will make progress and that we will do better… because we can do better! 

Thank you José Baselga! 

Peter Kapitein,
Patient Advocate, Inspire2Live