NTNU: first Pan-European Palliative Care Research Centre opens

28 Oct 2009 | Network Updates | Update from NTNU
These updates are republished press releases and communications from members of the Science|Business Network

The first pan-European centre devoted to improving palliative and end-of-life care has been officially launched at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), with the opening of the European Palliative Care Research Centre. The centre is based at NTNU’s Faculty of Medicine and at St. Olavs Hospital/Trondheim University Hospital.

The centre will focus on coordinating efforts between groups and individual researchers across Europe, specifically Great Britain, Italy, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, along with the US, Canada and Australia. Researchers hope to boost the amount of international multicentre studies, as well as to create an international PhD programme to educate young researchers in palliative care and to initiate and develop evidence-based guidelines for palliative care.

The Norwegian Cancer Society awarded a grant of 15 million NOK (€1.8 million) to help establish the new centre. Additional support has been awarded by the Open Society Institute in the US, the Floriani Foundation in Milan, Italy, and Nycomed, the pharmaceutical company.

“It is well acknowledged within the scientific field of palliative care that international collaboration is urgently needed in order to conduct sufficiently sized studies, as well as to evaluate the effect of new treatment strategies”, says Augusto Caraceni, of the Italian National Cancer Institute and vice president of the European Association for Palliative Care, who has been named director of international affairs for the new centre. “Such a research strategy will need funding. The establishment of the centre, through the very generous grant from the Norwegian Cancer Society, makes this possible.”

The centre will be based on an open invitation to all active researchers in palliative care to participate. It was established in Trondheim partly in recognition of the ability of the NTNU Faculty of Medicine’s Pain and Palliation Research Group to quickly translate the results of clinical research into new patient treatment. “I have been collaborating with the Pain and Palliation Research Group at the Faculty of Medicine, NTNU, for almost a decade,” Caraceni said. “The group in Trondheim is at the forefront in palliative care research in Europe and worldwide, with their capacity to plan and conduct translational research from bench to bedside, and their vision of a European research agenda across national borders is internationally recognised.”

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