Voorstelling

Jules Bordet Instituut

Organisation of European Cancer Institutes

Organisation of European Cancer Institutes

European Economic Interest Grouping

 

The beginning of OECI could be dated back to 1977 when, at the initiative of UICC (International Union against Cancer) sixty leading personalities in oncology from all over Europe assembled to discuss joint action for promoting greater cooperation among the world's cancer centres and institutes in the field of cancer collaborative research.

In 1980 the first meeting of the General Assembly of the "Organization of European Cancer Institutes" took place and the first steps to work out structures for efficient cooperation to overcome the linguistic and traditional research heterogeneity of Europe were taken.

In step with the ongoing developments in Europe in 2005, 25 years later, the organisation was again remodelled into OECI-EEIG (Organization of European Cancer Institutes and European Economic Interest Grouping).

OECI is a continuously growing and developing network presently regrouping around 50 centres across Europe who is dynamically working in crosscut expertise projects.

 

Activities

The OECI activities are organised in working groups and projects that are supported by the Education Working Group and the Guidelines Working Group. The main ongoing projects are mainly financed by yearly membership fees and some are also financed and supported by external funders such as the European Commission and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden, are:

• Accreditation project which aims to define consensual quality standards and criteria for European oncology and develop a tool for professionals enabling performances of the institutions to be assessed both internally plus externally. To increase the efficacy of cancer research and to strengthen joint public private research in Europe for more competitive cancer research a database of cancer centres describing in detail the infrastructures and human resources present will be developed in order to allow identification of the structures where accelerated development of innovative treatments or high quality clinical research is feasible. The concept of Comprehensive Cancer Center with integration of care, research and education is fundamental. Criteria for European Comprehensive Cancer Centers as well as harmonization of such centers to reach a critical mass for research are important goals.
   
• TRANSFOG project which aims at the systematic identification and functional characterization of novel cancer genes with high potential diagnostic and therapeutic value in breast, colon and lung cancer The project will greatly increase Europe competitiveness, provide a huge structuring effect on the ERA in the field of functional oncogenomics, and depict several new molecular targets for anticancer drug discovery and for advanced cancer diagnosis.
  
  
• Pathobiology project which has the task to standardise and harmonize the pathology in European cancer centres. European tissue banking, with a focus on TuBaFrost, plans to set up an OECI platform for difficult histology cases using Virtual Microscopy to present the complete histology for every case and discuss, on a Web-based forum, the different cases at the European level.
   
• New Technologies project which aims at creating a network within the OECI centres to co-ordinate individual efforts from European Cancer Institutes in the development of new technologies in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

The OEC-EEIG mission is to bring together the cancer research and care institutions of the EU in order to create a critical mass of expertise and competence with the view of building and maintaining a consensus on the best models of oncology, developing concrete affordable and realistic solutions to effectively combat cancer, and fostering the widest deployment of oncology models and solutions to improve the quality of life for the patients in the EU.

 

Institut Jules Bordet : Certificate of Membership (year 2008)

 

Fore more information

visit http://www.oeci-eeig.org or contact OECI office:

Mariana Musat, Manager
OECI-EEIG   
c/o Foundation Universitaire
Rue d’Egmont 11
BB - 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0) 2 512 01 46
Email: oeci@skynet.be

 

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