Karolinska Institute develops cancer diagnostics and treatments in a new European consortium.

A new European consortium is now being built – Cancer Core Europe – in which six of Europe’s most prominent cancer research centres take part. Karolinska Institutet is one of them.

“KI wants to be part of creating new and improved treatment methods for cancer patients in Sweden and in the rest of the world. This is a unique opportunity to contribute, and that is why we are joining the European consortium where all expertise needed for advanced research is gathered,” says Ulrik Ringborg, professor at Karolinska Institutet.

Within the EU, there has been a large collaboration project underway for a little over three years, called the Eurocan Platform, involving 23 of Europe’s most research-intensive cancer centres. Six of these, which all have a strong focus on the development of new treatment strategies for cancer and advanced clinical trials, have now chosen to enter a closer and more long-term collaboration. The plan is for these centres to electronically share patient data, biological tissue material, different measuring methods as well as results and follow-up data. This will help speed up the development of individualised treatment methods.

“The goal is for us to know in advance what treatment will work on a certain form of cancer. We should be able to give the right therapy at the right time to the right person, and we thereby hope to see a break in the trend, so that we are able to balance this growing problem. I believe this collaboration will give us better odds of improving quality of life, increase survival rates and cure more patients in the future,” says Ulrik Ringborg.