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Last November 30th the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation hosted the online symposium of the Netherlands Cancer Registry. The symposium focused on how to improve cancer care and prevention with insights from cancer registries. Cancer registries are the fuel for Europe’s Beating Cancer plan. The registries provide insights to improve oncological care and prevention. The Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR) is the national registration since 1989, maintained by the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL). The main goal is to reduce the impact of cancer, from the personal to the societal level. Together with care professionals, researchers, patients, and policy makers IKNL translates data into valuable insights. What lies ahead in the upcoming years and how can the cancer registries help to guide the way? The recording of the symposium can be found below.

The LANCELOT project is part of an ongoing strategic collaboration between the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL) and TNO, together with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, to develop data infrastructure and AI solutions to enable the use of sensitive health data. LANCELOT will help to reduce the impact of cancer while preserving patients’ privacy. LANCELOT focuses on problems where the data of patients are spread across different organizations, for example at the General Practitioner, the hospital and the pharmacy databases. We are looking for additional partners in healthcare, to bring our solutions to the next level by performing pilot studies, embedding the solutions within legal agreements, and using data in a privacy-preserving manner. 

Marissa van Maaren, postdoctoral researcher at IKNL, is the winner of the Enrico Anglesio Prize that was awarded at the online IACR congress 2021. The Enrico Anglesio Prize is awarded every year to a young researcher who has prepared an original work in the domain of epidemiology, cancer registration.

Most patients with cancer receiving immunotherapy, chemotherapy, or both as treatment for solid tumors respond well to vaccination against against Sars-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus.

Tuesday November 30th the Comprehensive Cancer Organisation Netherlands organized the online symposium of the Netherlands Cancer Registry. 

Patients with a carcinoma of unknown primary (CUP) in the Netherlands undergo an extensive diagnostic work-up, where the patient’s fitness does not appear to make any difference. IKNL-researcher Laura Meijer and colleagues conclude this in a recent paper on CUP diagnostics and treatment in the Netherlands, using data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry. The patient’s fitness did make a difference in whether a patient received systemic and/or local treatment, although most patients included in the study (58%) did not receive any treatment at all.

In the Dutch session at HIMSS2021 dr. Xander Verbeek, head Research & Development at the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organization was invited to share his vision on data analytics in oncology. He emphasized the role of the cancer registrations as fuel and engine for data driven rapid health systems, with the overall aim to learn from patients and improve health care. What is his vision for the future of data and AI to improve quality of cancer care?

IKNL joins PIONEER, the European Network of Excellence for Big Data in Prostate Cancer. Within this consortium research will be strengthened with data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR). A Data Sharing Agreements was signed for this purpose. IKNL will share results of analyses and aggregated data with Pioneer partners, thus protecting the patients' privacy.