Posts by year
2020
Roundtable ‘grasps nettle’ on European cancer inequalities
Improving treatment of older patients and closing the East−West divide were the focus of a Community 365 Roundtable on Inequalities organised by the European Cancer Organisation on the 14th October. This event was the first of a series of Community…
Gut microbiome positively influences abiraterone response in prostate cancer
Abiraterone acetate (AA), an agent used in castrate-resistant prostate cancer, promotes a shift towards health-associated, anti-inflammatory gut commensal bacteria, finds a study in Nature Communications. “These findings clearly demonstrate that the gut microbiome is playing a role in treatment response,”…
Cervical cancer: the SENTIX trial
Interview with David Cibula, MD, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic. Q. Your recent paper in the European Journal of Cancer (EJC 137 (2020) 69-80) on the SENTIX…
Stella Kyriakides: EU Commissioner for Health
When Stella Kyriakides took on the post of EU Health Commissioner in September 2019, Europe’s cancer community knew they could trust her to fight their cause. Within months she was launching a public consultation on Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. Then…
Dose dense chemotherapy in Luminal B breast cancers
Interview with Lucia Del Mastro, MD, Department of Internal Medicine and Medical Specialties, School of Medicine, University of Genova, Italy. Q. Your recent paper in the European Journal of Cancer (EJC 136 (2020) 43-51) on the GIM2 trial is clearly…
A silver lining: Could changes forced by the pandemic point to better ways to conduct our clinical trials?
Pragmatic adjustments to trial protocols were seen to be essential during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid trials being abandoned or delayed. Most changes involved reducing the requirements for travelling to centralised trials centres and reducing the level of reporting requirements.…
Their fingers on the button: why neglecting radiation therapists is no longer an option
The job of a radiation therapist may sound straightforward: deliver the right dose of radiation to the right location. But it’s not. These are complex tasks that involve working with data, high-tech equipment and patients. Moreover, by doing each task…
Four steps to eliminating HPV-related cancers: a call for action
A new report underlines that vaccination, screening, treatment and public awareness, provide the cornerstone for eliminating cancers linked to the human papillomavirus (HPV) in Europe. The report was published by The European Cancer Organisation, Brussels on 7th October. The report,…
These COVID days
‘Tackling cancer in interesting times’ was the theme of my first Editorial for Cancer World. I wrote that at the start of February this year, at a time when Europe remained largely oblivious to the implications of a new virus…
Delivering cancer care during the pandemic: lessons from the ‘first wave’
“My partner had to be admitted to hospital with neutropenia earlier on in her treatment cycle, and she and I are constantly discussing what to do: whether we should ask about suspending treatment, how the risk/benefit equation adds up, whether…