Cancer Research - Europa

Early Detection, Diagnosis
and Prognosis
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Europe and the western world, second only to cardiovascular
diseases, a trend that is exacerbated by an aging population and increasing the economic
burden of this disease. At present, diagnosis of cancer very often happens late in the course of the
disease, when cancer cells have already invaded surrounding tissues and metastasised throughout
the body, because current diagnostic methods are not suffi ciently sensitive and specifi c. An early
diagnosis of cancer would improve prognosis and treatment and could save thousands of lives a year
with obvious advantages for public health care costs and quality of life.
Although advances in EU-wide breast cancer (mammography), prostate cancer (prostate-specifi c
antigen testing) and cervical cancer screening (PAP smear and the likely introduction of PCR-based
detection of human papilloma virus DNA) have provided important progress in the early detection and
diagnosis of the disease, current diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and methods still do not reach
the sensitivity and specifi city that is needed to reliably detect early-stage disease in the majority of cancers
in for example non-invasive blood, urine, saliva, breath or stool assays. As a result, most therapeutic
strategies are limited in their success or even doomed to failure.
The 25 projects in this section focus on the molecular characterisation of a series of cancers with the
aim to translate this knowledge into novel early detection and diagnostic markers and tools, ranging
from cancer (stem) cells in peripheral blood, lymph nodes and tumour tissues, breath-gas analysis,
genetic tests to imaging probes and devices and endoscope technology.
Jan van de Loo