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European perspective for effective cancer drug development

Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology volume 11, pages 492–498 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Health systems and the clinical research landscape evolve continuously owing to increased risk aversion, scrutiny by funding bodies, and costs of clinical trials. In this context, however, current drug development procedures are far from optimal, as exemplified by the late-stage failure of several drugs. The identification of new drugs urgently requires approaches based on a solid understanding of cancer biology, and that will support the design of robust confirmatory trials. The complexity and the costs of drug development are now beyond the knowledge and operational capacity of single organisations, therefore, a drastic deviation from the traditional path of drug discovery and new forms of multidisciplinary partnerships are needed to succeed in this sector. The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) proposes the use of collaborative molecular screening platforms (CMSPs) as a new approach to tackle this issue. These CMSPs have the advantage of optimizing the expertise of several partners and combining efforts alongside with cost-sharing models for efficient patient selection. This article describes some of the challenges to advancing drug development and improving medical treatments and how these hurdles can be overcome.

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Figure 1: Depiction of a fully collaborative molecular screening programme.
Figure 2: The SPECTA programme encompasses tumour-specific platforms, bridges specific expertise on molecular pathology, provides a forum for stakeholder discussion, and explores innovative routes into regulatory and legal affairs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. EORTC Headquarters, Avenue Mounier 83/11, Brussels, 1200, Belgium

    Denis Lacombe & Vassilis Golfinopoulos

  2. U.Z. Leuven Campus Gasthuisberg, Herestraat 49, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Sabine Tejpar

  3. Institut Jules Bordet, Rue Heger-Bordet 1, Brussels, 1000, Belgium

    Roberto Salgado

  4. Champalimaud Cancer Centre, Avenue De Brasília, Doca de Pedrouços, Lisboa, 1400-048, Portugal

    Fatima Cardoso

  5. Universitaetsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus, Fetscherstrasse 74, Dresden, 01307, Germany

    Daniela Aust & Gunnar Folprecht

  6. Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, rue Gabrielle-Perret-Gentil 4, Geneve 14, 1211, Switzerland

    Arnaud Roth

  7. Division of Oncology, UniversitaetsSpital Zurich, Raemistrasse 100, Zurich, 8091, Switzerland

    Roger Stupp

Authors
  1. Denis Lacombe
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  3. Roberto Salgado
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  4. Fatima Cardoso
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  5. Vassilis Golfinopoulos
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  6. Daniela Aust
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  7. Gunnar Folprecht
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  8. Arnaud Roth
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  9. Roger Stupp
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Contributions

D.L., S.T., R. Salgado, V.G., D.A., G.F. and A.R. researched data for the article. D.L., S.T., R. Salgado, F.C., V.G., D.A., G.F. and A.R. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission. D.L., S.T., A.R. and R. Stupp substantially contributed to discussion of content. D.L., S.T. and R. Stupp wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denis Lacombe.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lacombe, D., Tejpar, S., Salgado, R. et al. European perspective for effective cancer drug development. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 11, 492–498 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2014.98

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