Cancer Research - Europa

Aim and expected results
CONTICANET aims at setting up a Network of Excellence as
a vehicle to create the critical mass of researchers, clinicians
and industrialists able to:
• improve the understanding of carcinogenesis and tumour
progression of connective tissue cancers in adults and
children and specifi cally of sarcomas, GIST, aggressive
fi bromatosis and hamartomas;
• develop new diagnostic tools, prevention strategies and
treatments for these connective tissue cancers in adults
and children.
The main goals of CONTICANET are to:
• create the critical mass of key stakeholders from translational,
pharmacological and clinical research to make a
real breakthrough in connective tissue cancer diagnosis
and management, both for adults and children;
• capitalise on pre-existing collaborations to set up, implement
and update a joint research programme and then a
European-wide organisation covering pre-clinical and
clinical research on connective tissue cancers with a
patient to patient approach;
• make available to all participants a strong network of
facilities accelerating research output.
From this integration, CONTICANET will provide a basis for
the development of new treatments and, from an industrial
point of view, to:
• establish synergisms between data and models acquired
by academics and drug development from the pharmaceutical
industry to improve therapeutic options for both
adults and children;
• validate some of those options with competent authorities
as a model for orphan disease.
CONTICANET will spread the excellence achieved in the
network to:
• improve training of health professionals in charge of
diagnosis and multidisciplinary primary care of the European
patients through the production of guidelines and
reference for medical practice. In particular, strong relationships
already exist – and will be reinforced – between
the consortium and:
• the European Society of Medical Oncology –
ESMO (all);
• the EORTC (ERASM, UCBL, IGR, INT, ICR, MAUNIHEI);
• the European Society for Surgical Oncology – ESSO
(INT, UCBL, IGR, ICR, MAUNIHEI);
• the European Society for Therapeutic Radiation
Oncology – ESTRO (UCBL, SLS, IGR, UNIPD, ICR);
• the European Musculo Skeletal Oncology Society –
EMSOS (INT, IGR, SLS);
• the European paediatric Soft tissue Sarcoma Group
– EpSSG (UNIPD, ICR, IGR, CURIE, BERGONIE);
• but also with international societies: the world wide
Connective Tissue Oncology Society – CTOS (UCBL,
IGR, ICR, ERASM, INT, MAUNIHEI);
• and European organisations such as orphanet
Europe, research directorate by contributing to the
European eff ort on rare diseases (www.cordis.lu/
lifescihealth/major/rare-diseases.htm).
• inform, get feedback from, collaborate with and support
patients advocacy groups (SOS-Desmoides, Jeunes Solidarité
Cancer, Life Raft);
• interact with EMEA, health authorities, social security
and insurances;
• involve other pharmaceutical, biotech and academic centres
in the EU to enlarge the capacity of the network;
• reinforce collaborations outside Europe, in particular with
Canada (McGill University), Russia (NCI Moscow), Israel
(Weizman Inst.), USA (MSKCC) and Australia (Peter Mac-
Callum Cancer Institute) Finally CONTICANET will generate
three diff erent types of results:
• an organisation gathering key stakeholders in connective
tissue cancer research and able to perform
signifi cant progress in the disease understanding
and management through jointly performed studies
in the fi elds of epidemiology, molecular biology
research, clinical research, drug development. This
organisation will take the form of an international
non-profi t association gathering all network participants.
This association will then in a second step
evolves towards a research foundation open to new
members and to sponsors. By involving pharmaceutical
companies and with the objective of extending
the approach to other uncommon cancers, such
a foundation will be self-sustained through the contributions
of its members and the support to be
obtained form the industry through the development
of orphan disease models;
• the delineation of methods, tools and activities which
will be developed within the network and supporting
the integration of the research activities of the participants
and which will be shared among participants
and ultimately beyond the network to strengthen
research in this fi eld:
– distributed standardised repository of tissues,
data, information supporting research activities;
– standardised Operating Procedures (SOP) at European
level;
– common pool of facilities: instruments, platforms,
drugs, diagnostic tools, etc.;
– collaborative platform for data transfer and validation
and collaborative work;
– network for pharmacodynamics based clinical
trials;
– standardised validated screening tools (ex vivo &
in vivo);
– pharmacovigilance network;
24 CANCER RESEARCH PROJECTS FUNDED UNDER THE SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME