Cancer Core Europe’s (CCE) vision is to transcend borders to connect and unite innovative centers of excellence: to more rapidly translate cancer discovery to the clinic for the benefit of patients. As a European cancer consortium, we carry out innovative research to propel cancer medicine into a new era.

Cancer Core Europe is an alliance of seven leading European cancer centers that combine scientific research with patient care. Cancer Core Europe was founded in 2014 to accelerate the development of innovative cancer therapies through close collaboration in translational and clinical research. Collectively, our seven cancer centers* treat approximately 350,000 patients annually.

Cancer Core Europe builds on the efforts of previous larger European consortia including the EurocanPlatform, a project that brought together 28 European cancer institutions and organizations that was funded by the European Commission under the seventh framework program. Cancer Core Europe’s members share a common vision to reshape the cancer research model towards ultimately increasing the European Union’s competitiveness as an arena to conduct cutting-edge research that is rapidly translated to the clinic to deliver on the promise of precision medicine in oncology.

In recent years, novel treatments targeting specific molecular alterations within tumors, as well as immune-based therapies, have shown remarkable results; however many challenges remain. More than half of all treated cancer patients live five years or longer, but work still remains to improve these survival rates. Cancer Core Europe brings together the expertise and critical mass required to effectively move translational research into the clinic, bringing breakthrough discoveries to benefit patients at an as appropriate as possible cost. Providing an environment where basic, translational, and clinical research occur side-by-side in our centers means that patients can benefit directly from experimental findings. Likewise, observations made in the clinic can provide essential insights to better inform and guide preclinical research.

In close collaboration with patient advocates, Cancer Core Europe embraces a patient-centered approach. Data exchange is crucial – the complementary expertise of each center l sustains a common infrastructure providing patients with access to cutting-edge therapies, including immune-based treatments, that can be more precisely tailored to certain individual patients. Collective efforts to pool information from clinical, environmental, genomic, imaging and immune biology databases, will transform clinicians’ and researchers’ approach to cancer research, thereby permitting a deeper understanding of disease than any single center could achieve independently. Dissemination of findings to the public and specialists and training the future generation of oncologists will contribute to improving cancer outcomes in Europe.

*Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) & National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, Gustave Roussy, Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori di Milano, Karolinska Institutet, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), Netherlands Cancer Institute