The Platon Network: One step closer to improved personalized medicine.
Authors: Vogel Arndt , Götze Thorsten , Saborowski Anna Lena , Agaoglu Nihat Bugra , Reinacher-Schick Anke C. , Westphalen Benedikt , Wild Peter , Stein Alexander , Pauligk Claudia , Zäpf Bianca , Al-Batran Salah-Eddin 
Published: June 2023

e15097

Background: Personalized medicine is a life saving approach in oncology, but it still needs improvement in profiling, applicability and accessibility. The PLATON Network (PLATON, NCT05489250) is an interactive precision oncology network that aims to improve personalized medicine by interlinking scientists, allowing them to view/follow their patients’ clinical and molecular profiles and to recruit new patients for ongoing clinical trials and to implement substudies or to benefit from the BioDataBank within the Network. PLATON covers various tumor entities and can also be considered as an umbrella structure for subprojects, substudies and a screening tool for molecular driven trials. Methods: PLATON enrolls patients during or prior to first line treatment and collects information on routine clinical data (baseline data, histopathology reports, treatment decisions, etc.). During follow up, all anti tumor therapy lines, tumor response, survival and quality of life data are recorded. Importantly, PLATON is able to offer molecular testing e.g. Foundation CDx and CDx Liquid and provide reports and molecular pathologoy case discussions by its own board of pathology experts. PLATON also enrolls cases with compatible external NGS reports through an evaluation by the central review board of medical advisors. PLATON is conducted by the Institute of Clinical Cancer Research (IKF) in Frankfurt. Results: Up to date 188 patients (122 male (m) and 66 female (f)) with complete standardized data capture of NGS report results and clinical data are enroled in the PLATON Network, from 31 sites. The mean age is 65(m)/67(f) (min: 21(m)/24(f) and max: 88(m)/87(f)). Within the diagnostic cohorts 43 patients with esophagogastric cancer, 50 with intra-/extrahepatic cholangiocellular carcinoma together with 13 patients with gallbladder carcinoma, 35 patients with hepatocellular cancer and 47 patients with pancreatic cancer are included. The individual observational status is ongoing in 88 out of 188 enrolled patients, while 87 died within 10 to 726 days after recruitment. Out of all cases, 134 were discussed in the educational series of the PLATON project ”Molecular Pathology Case Discussion. In 87 of these patients, targeted therapies were recommended based on the respective molecular profile of the tumors. In total 2707 genetic alterations were detected 1640 of them are variants of unknown significance (VUS). A tumor mutational burden (TMB) over 10 up to 67 mutations/mb could be detected in 21 cases. Conclusions: This first analysis of PLATON data shows the feasibility of the network. The obtained molecular results not only provide patient specific therapy follow up but also can provide a baseline data for further projects and substudies. PLATON’s interactive, multicenter, prospective cohort provides a well annotated and managed BioDataBank for translational research. PLATON aims to grow through prospective studies and is open to participation.