Medical universities in Vienna, Innsbruck and Graz combine the expertise of the Comprehensive Cancer Center
Vienna, Innsbruck, Graz (OTS) – In the run-up to World Cancer Day on February 4th, the medical universities in Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna are announcing an important merger: the newly founded Austrian Comprehensive Cancer Network (ACCN) brings together the expertise of the Comprehensive Cancer Centers (CCC) in Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna. This enables groundbreaking collaboration. The focus is on the goal of further improving the lives of cancer patients by promoting cancer research and optimizing the care landscape. Federal Minister Martin Polaschek supports the concern.
In Austria, over 44,000 people get cancer every year. In Europe, 1.3 million people lose their lives to cancer every year. If no further action is taken, the number of those affected will continue to rise. In order to be able to defeat cancer one day, major joint efforts are being made at the EU level as well as in Austria. With the ACCN, the fight against cancer in Austria is taken to a new level and a lighthouse project is launched, explained the Federal Minister for Education, Science and Research, Martin Polaschek, and the three heads of the CCC from Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna in a press conference. “Innovative science is used to address the health and societal challenges related to cancer in Austria. As Federal Minister of Education, Science and Research, it is particularly important to me to focus on the contribution of research to better coping with cancer and its physical and psychological consequences,” said Federal Minister Martin Polaschek.
More people in Austria have access to cutting-edge medicine
The EU has also made the fight against cancer one of the main tasks until 2030 as part of its “Horizon Europe” research funding program. The so-called “Mission Cancer” aims to improve the quality of life of affected people and ensure access to treatment through improved understanding of cancer and improved prevention, diagnosis and therapy. Austria is acting as a pioneer here with the founding of the ACCN. Resources and expertise are pooled to deliver innovative treatment approaches and research results that directly benefit cancer patients. “One goal of the cooperation partners is to further improve prevention and cutting-edge medicine in oncology and for people in Austria by networking local structures,” explains Shahrokh Shariat, head of the CCC Vienna and head of the University Clinic for Urology at Medizinischer University of Vienna and Vienna General Hospital. In the future, the ACCN should make it even easier to work together within Austria, but also within the framework of EU projects.
Together against cancer: First cooperation projects successfully started
The close collaboration between the CCCs and other research groups in Austria is already showing initial successes in the form of innovative projects. A project coordinated by the Medical University of Innsbruck deals with the microbiota, i.e. the intestinal flora, and its influence on the therapy of bladder and prostate cancer. A man in Austria is diagnosed with prostate cancer 7,000 times a year, and 1,200 people develop bladder cancer. “Although it is known that the microbiota influences the immune system, their interaction with the tumor environment, the so-called tumor microenvironment, or TME for short, and its diagnostic and therapeutic potential are incompletely understood,” explains Dominik Wolf, head of the CCC Innsbruck and the University Hospital for Internal Medicine V Oncology at the Medical University of Innsbruck. In a collaboration project between various research groups in Vienna and Innsbruck, prostate and bladder cancer are currently being investigated for the first time to determine which microbiota are associated with these tumors and whether, for example, there are abnormalities in the microbiota that could serve as markers for predicting a treatment response. The findings could also be of great interest for the treatment of other cancers.
Personalized medicine: Sound study sets new accents
In recent years, cancer treatment has increasingly developed into precision medicine. Personalized medicine is at the forefront of many tumor therapies. “We are dealing with the current and future challenges of molecular tumor therapy and the question of which genetic mutations in tumors should lead to a change in therapy and which should not,” explains Philipp Jost, head of the CCC Graz and the Medical Department of Oncology University of Graz. This is particularly important because the molecular understanding of changes in tumor cells is the core of future personalized, targeted and effective tumor therapy. The currently ongoing SOUND study, which is coordinated by the Med University of Graz, is intended to provide an important step towards personalized tumor therapy. For the first time in Austria, the SOUND study is investigating in a multicenter study whether patients with advanced cancer can be identified for targeted, personalized tumor therapy based on a molecular genetic examination of tumor tissue and/or blood and whether this therapy shows a clinical benefit.
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medical university Vienna
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