Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar receives ICPO Research Grant

In February, the International Centers for Precision Oncology (ICPO) Foundation announced the winner of its first AI research call on the topic of "AI-driven advances in precision oncology" with a grant of €100,000. "The goal of this initiative is to lay the groundwork for artificial intelligence to be used in a clinically meaningful, trustworthy, and ultimately beneficial way for patient care in theranostics," explained Sen. h. c. Udo Vetter, Chairman of the ICPO Foundation. In daily clinical practice, medical data is often fragmented and heterogeneous, especially in theranostics, where imaging, clinical, and treatment data are stored across different systems.

"In order to use digital tools responsibly and effectively in research, the underlying data must first be well prepared, structured, and harmonized," commented Prof. Richard P. Baum, Trustee of the ICPO Foundation and President of the "ICPO Academy for Theranostics." Accordingly, the first year of this three-year ICPO initiative is dedicated to building a robust data infrastructure before addressing more complex research questions in subsequent years.

The selected project is "ARCHE – An AI-supported curation and harmonization unit for structuring multimodal theranostics data," led by Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar at LMU Hospital in Munich. "With this project, the ICPO Foundation is not only promoting research – we are investing in a methodology that will shape the future of precision oncology and strengthen the ICPO Theranostics Center of Excellence network worldwide," explained Odile Jaume, CEO of the ICPO Foundation.

"For decades, data preparation in AI has often been considered secondary – yet high-quality, structured, and clean data is fundamental to the success of AI. Researchers routinely spend most of their time preparing data sets rather than innovating. Thanks to the forward-thinking support of the ICPO Foundation, we finally have dedicated resources to elevate autonomous data curation to a science in its own right," said Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar from the Department of Radiology at LMU Hospital in Munich, expressing his gratitude for receiving this ICPO AI Research Grant.

The project "ARCHE – An AI-powered curation and harmonization unit for structuring multimodal theranostic data" proposes an AI-powered harmonization solution specifically for theranostic data. This will be implemented within a single high-volume clinical center and developed on a large, fully and immediately accessible real-world cohort of more than 1,000 patient records, including various radioisotopes. This creates a unique opportunity to move from concept to implementation and demonstrate how structured, multimodal data can become a shared asset for the theranostics community.

The announcement was made at the 8th Theranostics World Congress 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa. ICPO received 18 high-quality applications from 12 countries, including Africa, North America, Asia, and Europe. All applications were thoroughly reviewed by an international evaluation committee of six experts from both the ICPO Scientific Advisory Board and the field of artificial intelligence. This combined expertise from nuclear medicine, physics, and AI.

About the ICPO Foundation
The International Centers for Precision Oncology Foundation (ICPO) is a non-profit organization founded in 2019 under German law by leading international medical professionals and entrepreneurs in the field of life sciences. Recognizing the paradigm shift in cancer treatment toward a personalized approach, the ICPO Foundation is helping to drive momentum for better access for patients worldwide by establishing an international network of ICPO Theranostics Centers of Excellence based on a model of shared expertise, certified training through the ICPO Academy for Theranostics, and the standardization of designs and processes that enable optimal clinical practice worldwide for better patient outcomes. www.icpo.foundation