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A Message from the President,
Prof. Ulrik Ringborg (Karolinska Institute, Sweden)
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Dear OECI Members,
in parallel with an increasing cancer burden, due to both increasing incidence and
also to patients living longer with chronic cancer disease, the complexity of cancer
care and research is escalating. For quality of care, multidisciplinary approaches
including diagnostic specialities, treatment disciplines as well as different types
of supportive care, is mandatory. Complexity in research is increasing with an enormous
expansion of information in basic and preclinical cancer research, providing information
of potential interest for clinical research. European cancer research is often criticized
because it is fragmented. To avoid fragmentation, cancer research should be integrated
into a research continuum from basic through preclinical and clinical research to
structured implementation and evaluation of new diagnostic and treatment methods in routine care. The ideal integration of the research process can be best achieved
in the comprehensive cancer centre (CCC), since this structure is the only one where all research components exist and integration with cancer care is natural.
Further, education has a position in the CCC and is integrated with care and research. |
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Although the CCC is able to offer multidisciplinary cancer care and integration
of cancer research, the critical mass for research is often lacking. The increasing
complexity, increasing number of diagnoses and more sophisticated technologies have
the consequence that almost all cancer centres are too small for a large part of
the research. Therefore we need to share resources and increase collaboration to
reach this critical mass. Thus, fragmented cancer research may be avoided by increased collaboration between CCCs. Since a number of infrastructures are necessary for
the development of translational research, centres should be harmonized regarding
infrastructures.
What is a CCC? In some countries comprehensive cancer centres are individual cancer
hospitals with a research organization. In other countries it is a part of a university hospital. Nevertheless, in both cases a potential number of cancer patients are
treated outside this CCC. According to the OECI vision, a CCC should be a core and
build a virtual organization to reach all patients in a defined geographic area. This will not only assure the quality of cancer care outside the CCC, but also make
more patients available for cancer research. In order to reach the critical mass,
CCCs should formalize a network to harmonize the infrastructure to facilitate the
collaboration between research groups. If such a process could be started a scientific
platform can successively be enlarged through OECI collaboration.
At present 57 centres are members of the OECI. Europe probably needs around 100
CCCs to serve the population and build up a strong research structure. Many of these
CCCs already exist but lack comprehensiveness. An important mission for the OECI
is to establish this close relationship with basic and preclinical research in Europe.
Integrating basic and clinical research centres with a network of CCCs will facilitate
the development of personalized medicine as well as the development of new diagnostic
and treatment methods. The appointment of Marco Pierotti as President elect, of
the OECI, and at present President of EACR, (European Association for Cancer Research)
will help our organization to go into this direction.
One of the major missions of the OECI is to develop major
comprehensiveness in cancer
research within OECI centres and to spread information to other CCCs still not involved
within the OECI project. To this end, workshops and scientific meetings are arranged
every year by our organization. This year (for 2007) four events have been organized
in addition to the General Assembly.
In January, a workshop was organized in Stockholm on “Innovation - the role of comprehensive
cancer centres”. The workshop concluded that the mission of a CCC is to innovate
cancer care. High quality cancer care should be combined with welldeveloped structures for translational research. To develop personalized medicine as well as new more
specific treatments, an integrated research process and collaboration between centres
to share resources are needed.
In February, a workshop on the accreditation program was organized in Villejuif
by Mahasti Sagatchian. The first pilot of the project (including Institute Gustave
Roussy, Institute Jules Bordet, Netherlands Cancer Institutes and partly the Karolinska
Institutet) was presented. The two manuals, one for measured characteristics of
cancer activities and one for quality assessment, were evaluated and improvements
were proposed. The next step, the second pilot, will be a test of the manuals together
with an auditing procedure. It was decided that the second pilot would involve the
cancer centres in Bari, Dijon, Budapest and the Flemish University Hospital in Brussels.
During the spring 2008 the final evaluation of the accreditation methodology will
be possible and thereafter the instrument will be available for the OECI members.
The main intention is to improve quality bench marking, as well as harmonizing CCCs
in Europe to facilitate collaboration in cancer research.
In March, a workshop on biobanking was arranged by Peter Riegman in Rotterdam. A
quality assured biobank is one of the most important infrastructures for translational
cancer research. The TuBaFrost Consortium has developed all the logistics for a
European virtual biobank. The workshop aimed to increase the number of members in
this Consortium. Around 80 individuals from 17 European countries participated in
the workshop. Thus, the interest for collaboration in tumour biobanking is obvious
and here the OECI has an important role to implement TuBaFrost in OECI centers.
In May, Claudio Lombardo and the Education Working Group organized a workshop in
Genoa to inform about the OECI accreditation project. Being in the final stage of
the process to establish an accreditation methodology it is important to provide education about how to use the methodology.
In June, the annual General Assembly of OECI was organized in Copenhagen. A translational
cancer research meeting was
linked to the General Assembly. The Danish Cancer Society hosted the OECI with Julio Celis and David Moellerup as organizing persons. The
Copenhagen meeting was successful. Nine new centres were accepted as members.
The importance of formalizing collaboration between CCCs in Europe is now expressed
also by organizations other than the OECI, showing that our mission is increasing
in importance. If we are be able to harmonize our centres with the accreditation
methodology, improve the scientific collaboration and speak for European cancer
with a single voice, we have started a process to unify European cancer activities.
Thus, it will be possible to create an integrated cancer research discipline, increase
collaboration regarding use of patient materials, sophisticated techniques and intellectual capital in a more functional way with the aim of meeting the needs of our patients.
With my kindest regards,
Sincerely yours,
Ulrik Ringborg
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