Towards a Cancer Mission in Horizon Europe

Ever since former Commissioner for Research Philippe Busquin established the European Cancer Research Area (ECRA) in 2002 (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-02-408_en.htm) to address the fragmentation of cancer research in Europe, the cancer community and policymakers have been trying to develop strategies to bridge the gaps between basic/preclinical and clinical research and research and healthcare (Celis and Pavalkis, 2017). These efforts culminated in 2014 with the creation of Cancer Core Europe (Eggermont et al., 2019), a patient-centred legal structure on therapeutics that currently consists of seven large cancer centres (mainly Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs, institutions that link research with the healthcare system; Saghatchian et al., 2008) across Europe. Inspired by the Cancer Core Europe initiative, a consortium of 10 cancer prevention centres was recently established – Cancer Prevention Europe – to reinforce the complete cancer prevention research continuum (Wild et al., 2019). At present, Cancer Core Europe and Cancer Prevention Europe are in the process of integrating their strategies to create a coherent plan for prevention, early detection and treatment, and efforts are underway to engage the outcomes research geometry and to network with other infrastructures, CCCs, and research and clinical centres across Europe (https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/18780261/2019/13/3). To date, several prominent scientific cancer organisations and cancer centres are collaborating to develop a unified insight towards a mission-oriented approach to cancer. These include Cancer Core Europe, Cancer Prevention Europe, the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI), the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR), the EuroTech Universities Alliance, the European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC), the European Academy of Cancer Sciences (EACS), and the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO); other organisations are expected to join shortly. Getting where we stand today required (a) building communities, (b) working in partnership, (c) engaging key stakeholders, (d) identifying champions among researchers, clinicians, policymakers and patients, (e) organizing science, and (f) providing future perspectives and evidence-based advice to inform policy (Celis and Heitor, 2019; Celis and Pavalkis, 2017). The EACS, as an independent organisation composed of eminent oncologists and cancer researchers, has actively supported the creation of a Cancer Mission (Adami et al., 2018) and, as a result, has been requested to coordinate the process of developing such a joint strategy to speak with a single voice. At a recent meeting organised by the EACS in Brussels, most of the organisations mentioned above met to prepare a short document addressing the goals, structuring activities and areas of priority required to accomplish the mission. The text, which was recently sent to the Cancer Mission Board, stated: 'To have impact on society at large, the Cancer Mission aims at uniting countries to substantially reduce the massive EU cancer burden and improve the quality of life of patients by promoting cost-effective, evidence-based best practices in cancer prevention, treatment, and care. Our goal is to achieve 10-year cancer survival for 3/4 patients by the year 2030. Because cancer mortality provides a more timely assessment of progress which also captures advances in primary prevention, it will be important to document the expected declining trends in age-standardized mortality in each EU country. The document will be updated regularly as new organisations and infrastructures join the platform, and further information becomes available regarding governance and the portfolio of projects and activities. We would like to thank Christina von Gertten for coordinating the preparation of the manuscript. We also like to thank Claudia Mayer for expert support, and Duncan Wright for comments on the article. Carolina Espina and Joachim Schüz state: where authors are identified as personnel of the International Agency for Research on Cancer / World Health Organization, the authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this article, and they do not necessarily represent the decisions, policy or views of the International Agency for Research on Cancer / World Health Organization. Michael Baumann states: In the past 5 years, Dr. Baumann attended an advisory board meeting of MERCK KGaA (Darmstadt), for which the University of Dresden received a travel grant. He further received funding for his research projects and for educational grants to the University of Dresden by Teutopharma GmbH (2011–2015), IBA (2016), Bayer AG (2016–2018), Merck KGaA (2014–2030), Medipan GmbH (2014–2018). For the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Heidelberg) Dr. Baumann is on the supervisory boards of HI-STEM gGmbH (Heidelberg). Dr. Baumann, as former chair of OncoRay (Dresden) and present CEO and Scientific Chair of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Heidelberg), was or is responsible for collaborations with a multitude of companies and institutions, worldwide. In this capacity, he has signed/signs contracts for his institute(s) and for the staff for research funding and/or collaborations with industry and academia, worldwide. In this role, he was/is further responsible for commercial technology transfer activities of his institute(s), including the DKFZ-PSMA617 related patent portfolio and similar IP portfolios. Dr. Baumann confirms that none of the above funding sources were involved in the preparation of this paper. Other authors declare no conflict of interest.