Message from the President
Dear EORTC members,
After a very successful EGAM 2005 with 800 participants and at the beginning of the holiday season, I wish to provide you with recent news about EORTC and feedback from the first Board and General Assembly (GA) meetings (May 31 and June 1, 2005 ).
- EORTC statutes have been modified to enlarge the GA by including a representative from the 15 institutions with the largest contribution in terms of patients accrual. Publication in the Belgian Moniteur will appear in the coming weeks. Elections for the new EORTC Board will take place on June 16, 2006 .
- A Task Force has been created to increase involvement of young oncologists in EORTC activities including:
- formal representation within the Steering Committees of all EORTC groups;
- participation in TR projects.
- A NOCI Task Force has also been created to define specific research projects to be allocated to a network of core institutions (NOCI) with laboratory research facilities, strong commitment to TR and to EORTC clinical trials.
- An Academic Research Fund has been created to support priority studies approved by PRC but without adequate funding. The Board approved to allocate funds to two studies:
- EORTC trial 22051-10052: SUPREMO (Selective Use of Postoperative Radiotherapy aftEr MastectOmy) A phase III randomised trial to assess the role of adjuvant chest wall irradiation in ‘intermediate risk' operable breast cancer following mastectomy”.
- “EORTC trial 20051: The H10 EORTC/GELA randomized Intergroup trial on early FDG-PET scan guided treatment adaptation versus standard combined modality treatment in patients with stages I/II Hodgkin ' s lymphoma”.
- Three Translational Research projects have been approved by the EORTC Board:
- “TGIF4 : SNP Microarray analysis of Breast Cancer : Host-tumour interaction in inflammatory breast cancer”.
- “A translational research project on the use of molecular markers to predict response in rectal cancer EORTC 22921”.
- “Clinical significance of alterations in the nucleophosmin gene in patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia enrolled in the EORTC- GIMEMA AML-12 trial”.
- Finally, it is a pleasure to inform you that Françoise Meunier, the EORTC Director General, has been selected as the Belgian Laureate for the Prize “Femmes d'Europe” . The award ceremony will be held at the Belgian Senate on July 13, 2005 .
Updated information on EORTC is available on the EORTC website
I wish you a good summer and thank you for your loyalty and dedicated contribution.
With my best personal regards,
Lex Eggermont
EORTC President
