News

One in four patients in Denmark experience complications after colon cancer surgery, leading to re-admission, permanent damage and, in some cases, early death. A new research project, called FLORENCE, aims to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of patients with colon cancer. The project will develop an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to give doctors a better basis for decisions on patient treatment.

Nearly two-thirds of 38 examined randomized trials of immunotherapy in bladder, lung and kidney cancer included adjustment to primary endpoints. Only a minority of these studies reported these changes transparently, contrary to current guidelines. These are the outcomes of a review published by the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL), Radboud University Medical Center (The Netherlands), and Queens University Cancer Research Institute (Canada).

English translations are now available on Pallialine in addition to the Dutch palliative care guidelines. A number of guidelines have been fully translated into English and summaries of some are available in English. These English guidelines and summaries on palliative care can be found for all interested healthcare professionals on a separate page on Pallialine, under the English Guidelines.

Cancer survivorship should be a topic addressed at the European level al well as the national one, says the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). Not only because everyone in Europe should have access to the best possible care, but also because there is a lot that European countries can learn from each other. Dr. Lonneke van de Poll-Franse (IKNL/NKI-AVL/Tilburg University) is one of the experts within ESMO involved with cancer and quality of life: ‘We want to realise good quality of care for everyone who lives with or after cancer, but healthcare is organised differently everywhere. Therefore, how to best organise health care will be different everywhere in Europe, but we can collaborate and learn from each other.’

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has selected the first data partners to collaborate with the international DARWIN EU® network. IKNL is one of the organizations that has been approached and selected for this, through the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, which has been appointed as the DARWIN EU® Coordination Center. DARWIN EU® is an EU-wide federated network of high-quality observational healthcare databases across Europe, that provides expertise and services to support regulatory decision-making throughout the lifecycle of a medicinal product.

The BlueBerry Kick Off meeting took place on the 22nd of November both in Utrecht and online. For the next two years European medical centers and organizations will work together to deliver a blueprint for a sustainable, scalable, and impactful EURACAN rare cancers registry. EURACAN is the European Reference Network for adult patients with rare solid cancers. To better understand and treat such rare cancers, European collaboration is essential. Therefore, the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) funded BlueBerry in order to shape such a European rare cancer registry. 

Harriet Rumgay defended her PhD dissertation on Thursday 10 November 2022 at the Erasmus University. Her thesis is titeled: ’Measuring the Impact of Alcohol on the Global Burden of Cancer: International analyses of alcohol-related cancers‘.  She is researcher at IARC - International Agency for Research on Cancer / World Health Organization. In this video she presents the main findings of her research and calls for effective policies to increase public awareness of the risks of alcohol consumption and to reduce the burden of cancers caused by alcohol consumption. An estimated 741000 new cases of cancer in 2020 were associated with alcohol consumption globally. About three quarters of these cancers occurred in men.

Thursday november 9th, Josine Kuiper defended her PhD thesis on primary care use of patients with colorectal cancer at Erasmus University. This thesis aimed to get more insight into the utilisation of primary care among colorectal cancer patients, including their healthcare seeking behaviour before diagnosis, the effect of its pharmacological treatment on the occurrence of heart failure, and associations between drug use and the risk of colorectal cancer.