Posts by author
Sophie Fessl
Cancer Neuroscience: How Neurons Fuel Tumor Growth, and What it Means for Therapy
In May 2025, neuroscientist Frank Winkler, together with neurooncologist Michelle Monje, received the Brain Prize for pioneering Cancer Neuroscience, a discipline that explores how neurons actively contribute to tumor growth. How are nerve and tumor cells interacting, and how could…
Empowering Patients in Europe’s New Health Technology Assessment
Across the European Union, cancer patients often wait months, or even years, for access to promising new treatments already approved by the EMA. Now, the EU’s new Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Regulation is introducing a shared framework for evaluating new…
Drug repurposing: EU legislative changes could speed up new treatment options
The length of time it takes for each new cancer drug to reach the market – and more importantly, the patient – remains a cause of deep frustration particularly among those whose lives depend on accessing new options. Concrete data…
The voice of the older adult: how to make it count in decisions about their care
Involving patients as equal partners in choosing between treatment options is particularly important when there is considerable uncertainty about how the options could affect their survival and quality of life. Such is often the case in treating older patients, who…
Precision cancer nursing: using the personalised medicine paradigm to improve patient care
Precision medicine is transforming the way we treat cancer. Oncology is evolving from treating purely on the basis of a broad indication to a tailored approach that is based on a tumour’s molecular characteristics, and usually requires complex combinations of…
A Health Data Space for patients, science, policy and industry: can Europe make it work?
The answers to so many pressing questions about cancer, and about how best to diagnose and manage the disease and care for patients, lie waiting to be revealed through analysis of data that is currently spread across tens of thousands…
Nanotechnology is steadily expanding its many roles in tackling cancer
A nanomedicine, as defined by the US National Institutes of Health, is a “highly specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues... ” For regulatory purposes, the term covers products with a size between…
Unicorns for Ukraine: mobilising to meet patients’ changing cancer care needs
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, consultant clinical oncologist Mohammed Hojouj put out a call for help: “Cancers do not stop growing because there is a war. But cancer patients stop being seen as a priority.” The story he…
What can we expect from mRNA cancer vaccines?
Messenger RNA vaccines turned around Europe’s fight against the Covid pandemic. Less than a year after the first lockdowns were declared, mRNA vaccines got regulatory approval for emergency use, first in people at high-risk from Covid, and later in the…
Global elimination: securing a future free from cervical cancer
August 7th 2020, much of the world was in various states of lockdown, anxiously awaiting news about progress in development of vaccines against the new SARS-Cov-2 virus, which by then had taken the lives of almost 1 million people. But…