The PRECISE European initiative for cancer-vulnerability mapping and prediction

Together with 30 other research groups, the Kalebic Lab is part of PRECISE (Predictive Relationships Explaining Cancer Genetic Interactions and Synthetic Essentiality), a pan-European network coordinated by Francesco Iorio from Human technopole, that aims to combine high-throughput perturbation biology, multimodal profiling and AI-driven inference to predict cancer vulnerabilities in disease-relevant models.  

We are excited to share that the vision and the mission of PRECISE have now been presented in a Nature Genetics (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-026-02658-z) commentary. 

The cohort of patient-derived 2D and 3D glioblastoma models generated by our lab will enable the identification and validation of actionable vulnerabilities in molecularly heterogeneous, clinically relevant human systems. 

Furthermore, Stefania Faletti’s work, which links glioblastoma stem cell aggressiveness with cellular morphology, will allow to integrate tumor cell morphology as an additional layer of PRECISE’s multimodal readouts, further connecting molecular dependencies with cellular and biological phenotypes. 

By going beyond the descriptive cataloguing of gene essentiality, PRECISE seeks to uncover generalisable principles explaining when, where and why cancer dependencies arise. Our lab contributions will help extend PRECISE’s predictive framework to glioblastoma and support the development of future precision oncology strategies for this highly aggressive tumor. 

Learn more about the PRECISE consortium (https://precise-eu.org/) and Human Technopole contribution (https://humantechnopole.it/en/news/beyond-cancer-dependency-maps-the-precise-vision/)