Too many patients lose the advantage of being accurately diagnosed or are deprived of the most effective anticancer drugs just because we are unable to control them. This is not acceptable.
Doctors treating cancer would often like to use molecules demonstrated as effective against tumours in the laboratory, but abandoned due to excessive side effects. Many highly promising drugs have thus been discarded.
When biologists have a tumour fragment to analyse, they can help doctors select the most appropriate treatment for each case. The problem lies with the difficulty in accessing certain parts of the body, the brain for instance, thus preventing the establishment of an accurate diagnosis. And millions of patients see the drugs that might have saved them disappear. Clinatec has the means to change this.
My daughter would have wanted to experiment with new treatments
My daughter was a 21 year-old student when her brain tumour was detected. Despite the poor prognosis, she fought for seven years, qualified in political sciences and found a position. Today, when I think of her, I really hope that researchers discover new, less aggressive and better targeted treatments.
During one of her last winters, my daughter could not stand shoes because the soles of her feet were damaged following chemotherapy. She also suffered from dreadful respiratory problems that were not related to her tumour but to its treatment! I sincerely hope that the new treatments that Clinatec will provide us with will be better targeted and able to save many more patients. I find it very difficult to think back on all this, but I know my daughter would have asked Professor Berger to try out his new treatments on her if they had been there when she still was. She never lost faith. »
The challenge for Clinatec?
Provide carers with the tools they sorely miss to speed up the discovery of cancer treatments, decipher the mechanisms of this illness and set up new therapeutic strategies. €6.3 million is required for Project Cible (creation of miniaturized devices capable of delivering anticancer molecules directly into the tumour) and €9.8 million for Project Explorer (development of miniaturized surgical instruments enabling the collection of information by plain contact with the tumour and/or its environment). The first trials will investigate the treatment of glioblastoma, the most aggressive of brain cancers. Clinatec then plans to address the issue of prostate cancer, pituitary gland cancer and breast cancer…