Acropolis (Advanced Collaborative Research for Oncology Platform for Improved Outcomes, Learnings, Insight and Science)

A secure digital platform will pool and analyse patient genetic, molecular and imaging data from multiple UK cancer centres, linking them for the first time in a single research environment. Stratified medicine—matching treatments to patients based on their biology—requires vast amounts of high-quality patient data. Currently, researchers struggle to access such data because it sits in isolated hospital systems, often in incompatible formats, and must be handled with strict privacy safeguards. The Acropolis platform solves this by providing the informatics infrastructure to acquire, pseudonymise, and integrate data from diverse sources, then offer secure storage, retrieval, and analysis services. If successful, Acropolis will accelerate translational cancer research by giving scientists a unified, privacy-protected dataset to identify which treatments work for which patients. This could speed up the development of targeted therapies, reduce trial costs, and improve outcomes by ensuring patients receive treatments most likely to benefit them. The consortium—led by data management firm IDBS, with hosting company Quantix and cancer institutes at Manchester and King’s Health Partners—has the components needed to support this research. The platform’s design could also extend beyond cancer to other diseases, strengthening the infrastructure that underpins stratified medicine globally.