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OECI in a nutshell
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History
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The beginning of OECI could be dated back to 1977 when, at the initiative of UICC
(International Union against Cancer) sixty leading personalities in oncology from
all over Europe assembled to discuss joint action for promoting greater cooperation
among the world's cancer centres and institutes in the field of cancer collaborative research.
In 1980 the first meeting of the General Assembly of the "Organization of European
Cancer Institutes" took place and the first steps to work out structures for
efficient cooperation to overcome the linguistic and traditional research
heterogeneity of Europe were taken.
In step with the ongoing developments in Europe in 2005, 25 years later,
the organisation was again remodelled into OECI-EEIG (Organization of European
Cancer Institutes and European Economic Interest Grouping).
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Organization
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OECI is a continuously growing and developing network presently regrouping around
50 centres across Europe who is dynamically working in crosscut expertise projects
supported by the Education and the Guidelines Working Groups.
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Projects
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The main ongoing projects, some financed and supported also by external funders
such as the European Commission and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden, are:
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Accreditation
Accreditation project which aims to define consensual quality standards and criteria
for European oncology and develop a tool for professionals enabling performances of
the institutions to be assessed both internally plus externally. To increase the efficacy
of cancer research and to strengthen joint public private research in Europe for more competitive
cancer research a database of cancer centres describing in detail the infrastructures and human
resources present will be developed in order to allow identification of the structures where
accelerated development of innovative treatments or high quality clinical research is feasible.
The concept of Comprehensive Cancer Center with integration of care, research and education is fundamental.
Criteria for European Comprehensive Cancer Centers as well as harmonization of such centers to reach a
critical mass for research are important goals.
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TRANSFOG
TRANSFOG project which aims at the systematic identification and functional
characterization of novel cancer genes with high potential diagnostic and therapeutic
value in breast, colon and lung cancer The project will greatly increase Europe
competitiveness, provide a huge structuring effect on the ERA in the field of functional oncogenomics,
and depict several new molecular targets for anticancer drug discovery and for advanced cancer diagnosis.
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Pathobiology
Pathobiology project which has the task to standardise and harmonize the pathology
in European cancer centres. European tissue banking, with a focus on TuBaFrost,
plans to set up an OECI platform for difficult histology cases using Virtual
Microscopy to present the complete histology for every case and discuss, on a
Web-based forum, the different cases at the European level.
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New Technologies
New Technologies project which aims at creating a network within the OECI centres
to co-ordinate individual efforts from European Cancer Institutes in the
development of new technologies in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of
cancer.
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Mission
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The OECI-EEIG mission is to bring together the cancer research and care institutions
of the EU in order to create a critical mass of expertise and competence with the view
of building and maintaining a consensus on the best models of oncology, developing
concrete affordable and realistic solutions to effectively combat cancer,
and fostering the widest deployment of oncology models and solutions to improve
the quality of life for the patients in the EU.
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