Optimizing taste perception in oncology: The Gustabor project for customized AI-based nutritional interventions
The Gustabor project brings together experts in medicine, nutrition, and computer science, alongside patients from all Bavarian university hospitals, to address taste disorders caused by cancer therapy. These disorders significantly impact patients' quality of life, nutrition, therapy adherence, and prognosis. Despite existing general and specific measures, such support is not systematically available in German centers.
The project aims to objectify and treat taste disorders using AI-driven nutritional recommendations. In the first pilot phase, an AI will be developed over one year at three sites (University Hospital Würzburg, LMU University Hospital Munich and University Hospital Regensburg), working closely with patient representatives. The AI will tailor nutritional plans based on individual taste disorders, determined through standardized taste tests, and draw from a database of over 500,000 recipes. Patients with gastrointestinal tumors or multiple myeloma suffering from therapy-related taste issues will participate. In the second phase, the final AI platform will be tested in a randomized study involving patients at six Bavarian university hospitals.
The project is in close collaboration with the Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC München LMU), LMU University Hospital, Munich, the Department of Internal Medicine I, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Endocrinology, Rheumatology and Infectious Diseases, University Hospital Regensburg.
In the second phase of the study additional collaboration centers will be the Department of Medicine III, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, the Department of Internal Medicine 5-Hematology and Oncology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, and the Department of Hematology and Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Augsburg.
It is funded by the Bavarian Centre for Cancer Research (BZKF)
