Rare cancers
Theme leader: Carla van Herpen
Despite the rarity of each of the 186 rare cancers (i.e. incidence <6/100,000), they represent in total about 22% of all cancer cases. Examples are head and neck cancer, sarcoma, thyroid cancer, neuroendocrine cancer, brain tumors, lymphoma, and pediatric cancer. They pose particular challenges due to their low frequency, including (i) late or incorrect diagnosis; (ii) lack of access to appropriate therapies and clinical expertise; (iii) a very limited number of clinical trials due to the small number of patients; (iv) lack of interest in the development of new therapies due to limitations in the market; (v) few available registries and tissue banks. Our mission is to improve diagnosis and prognosis for this patient group in an (inter)national collaborative setting.