KU Leuven: €1M for research on rare tumours

The Flemish League against Cancer (VLK) is giving €1 million for research at KU Leuven to improve diagnosis and treatment of rare tumours.

Every year nearly 9,000 people in Belgium are diagnosed with a rare cancer. The VLK wants the money, which comes from bequests, to focus on innovative, patient-oriented research in rare cancers that currently receive little or no funding from the government or the pharmaceutical industry.

A cancer is considered rare when there are less than 600 cases each year in Belgium. In 2004 there were nearly 9,000 new diagnoses of rare cancers. In the same year 9,500 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed, indicating that patients with a rare cancer are not so rare - only their illness is.

The research projects include new treatment options for chronic leukaemia, research into prevention and prognosis of throat cancer caused by infection with human papillomavirus, statistical analysis that the variability of treatment of patients with rare cancers, including the survival chances. The results of this last project may lead to guidelines for clinicians to improve treatment of rare cancers.