Cancer research - where now?  Signposts towards the future

The conference proceedings were live video-streamed
The individual presentation videos are linked next to their Programme entries below

There have been some excellent improvements in cancer treatment with more patients being cured or living longer lives and with less long-term adverse effects from treatment, but the overall war against cancer is stalling. Drugs targeted against specific genetic and proteomic markers will play an important role in the future. However, ten years of intense work on The Cancer Genome Atlas sequenced 10,000 malignant tumours and discovered about 10,000,000 cancer related mutations. (TCGA, 2006-2015)

A systematic study of cancer drugs approved by the European Medicines Agency in recent years found that most had no evidence of better survival or quality of life (doi:10.1136/bmj.j4530).

Fiona Goodlee, Editor in Chief of the BMJ recently wrote (5th Oct. 2017):
"The few drugs with evidence of benefit achieved only marginal gains."

The percentage of children and young people with cancer who survive more than ten years has increased little since 2000, and those who do survive often have considerable personal health and life challenges. It is clear that we need to develop improved approaches and integrate changes that have been shown to help.
This challenging conference explored evidence-based possibilities for change.

Click on the speaker names for more information on each presentation