Screening Platform for Clinical Trials in Advanced Colorectal Cancer

The EORTC GastroIntestinal Tract Cancer Group and the EORTC HeadQuarters wish to set up a European screening platform for advanced colo-rectal cancer (CRC) patients. The goal of this screening platform is to provide quick access to new drugs to patients by offering a new structure for clinical trials. Currently some of the most challenging clinical questions arise from the molecular sub-division of CRC that would theoretically allow to inhibit the specific, altered pathways in the patients. A major problem for trials in this "personalized medicine" is that the low frequency of the different mutations requires a high effort for screening and identifying the patients. The EORTC CRC screening platform will hopefully offer a feasible and efficient way to characterize the patients on the molecular basis of their tumors and allow to offer them rapid and preferential participation in clinical studies with new drugs targeted to their specific pathway alterations.