Articles
Informal carers play a key role in cancer care: they need and deserve more support
What is it worth to patients to have someone they can rely on to provide emotional support and talk things through, help them get to and from appointments, remind them about what medicines to take and when, help them eat…
Liver cancer: how Europe can halt the rising death toll
When the cancer community in Europe talks of neglected cancers it usually means relatively rare or uncommon types, of which there are many. But conspicuous in the list are two digestive cancers that are both deadly, not uncommon and increasing…
Drugs shortages: ‘We parents of children with cancer are too exhausted to protest’
When it all started, Ioana Oprea did not have a spare moment to come to terms with what had happened ‒ to truly take in the fact that her son Teodor had a brain tumour. In the autumn of 2020,…
North and South ‒ learning faster means learning together
When you look at the vast waiting area in Mumbai’s world leading Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital, pictured above, what do you see? A crowded chaotic scene where sick patients and their relatives sit around for hours, waiting, hoping for someone…
Woman or man? Is precision medicine overlooking key biological differences?
“Something that hit me pretty early during my residency as an oncologist was that sex in most cases is a clear-cut binary, pretty obvious biological variable affecting attitudes as well as tolerance to cancer treatment that we still rarely ‒…
Surviving childhood cancer: how we standardise care across Europe
When Lejla Kameric’s daughter was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the twelve-year-old had to get through lumbar punctures without pain relief. “15 years ago in Bosnia, painful procedures and diagnostic activities were done without anaesthesia,” Kameric recalls. “Still now, young doctors…
The development of organoids for cancer research: an ode to the scientific method
Some twenty years ago, I sailed with my two little sons Sander (aged 7) and Max (aged 5) on the Ijsselmeer, formerly a large inner sea in the centre of my country. We passed by a beautiful row of newly…
Cancer and fertility preservation: it can be done… Can’t it?
“I was 26 when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015. I knew before starting cancer treatment that it is possible to preserve fertility. But having been knocked flat by months of illness and still dazed by the diagnosis,…
Cancer-related fatigue: Might research into long-Covid help find causes and cures?
Long-term emotionally and physically debilitating fatigue is a fact of daily life for many who have had cancer. Awareness is low, causes mysterious, and physicians are often sceptical or plead powerlessness – even though a growing body of research attests…
From sea bed to bedside: Tapping the cancer pharmacy beneath the waves
Around 80% of life on our planet is found in ecosystems located within the almost 300 million cubic miles of ocean that cover the earth. Among its many wonders, the ocean is a treasure trove for medical sciences, providing knowledge…