Six of Europe’s leading cancer centers of excellence recently joined together to launch Cancer Core Europe, a consortium to support the full spectrum of research required to address the cancer research—cancer care continuum​. Cancer Core Europe aims to narrow the bench-to-bedside gap in speeding up the time it takes translational research discoveries to make their way into patient care. The consortium plans to do so by conducting next-generation clinical trials focused on proof-of-concept, companion predictive and resistance monitoring biomarkers.

Cancer Core Europe participants include: the Cambridge Cancer Centre (Cambridge, United Kingdom), the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden), the Netherlands Cancer Institute (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona, Spain), and the German Cancer Research Center and its National Center for Tumor Diseases (Heidelberg, Germany).

To better enable joint research programs, the consortium plans to connect the sites by creating a virtual “e-hospital.” Four areas of data will be linked across the partnership:

  • Electronic medical records that will ease the exchange of patient information according to clinical trial protocols;
  • Molecular imaging and diagnostics to enable comparable monitoring of patients;
  • A clinical trial infrastructure that will eventually allow one of the six centers to sponsor trials across the consortium; and
  • Development of innovative next-generation clinical trials.

Annually across the Cancer Core Europe consortium as a whole, 60,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients are seen, 300,000 cancer treatments are delivered, about 1 million outpatient visits are performed, and around 1,500 clinical trials are conducted.

Patrick Maxwell, MD, Regius professor of physic and head of the school of clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge, said in a prepared statement, "This initiative brings together outstanding cancer centers across Europe in a visionary way. Our understanding of cancer is increasing faster than ever before, and over the next decade or so I believe that this will lead to a revolution in how physicians treat patients. This network will lead that revolution."

Read the Cancer Core Europe position paper.

Discover more about Cancer Core Europe consortium partners: 
Cambridge Cancer Centre: www.cambridgecancercentre.org.uk 
Karolinska Institutet: www.ki.se 
Netherlands Cancer Institute: www.nki.nl
Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology: www.vhio.net
DKFZ-NCT: www.dkfz.de​