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Unmet Needs
Most new cancer cases are expected to affect people in low and middle income countries. In addition, the number of elderly people with cancer is expected to almost double during the next two decades. Cancer disease management needs to focus on earlier diagnosis and use of more precise and effective medicines to master the massive burden on patients and society.
For cancer patients undergoing treatment and cancer survivors
- Earlier detection and diagnosis through improved diagnostic and prognostic methods with rapid results and confirmation if the tumour is benign or malignant, improved prognostic tests for improved treatments, and improved prognostic methods to determine improved five year survival rate in e.g. lung cancer
- More effective treatments that lead to less risk of metastases of tumours, better prognosis and cure, and improved survival
For advanced stage and terminally ill cancer patients
- Improved palliative care and medication through improved pain and breakthrough pain control, medication with fewer adverse events, and medication that enables home care.
Providers are targeting unmet clinical needs by focusing on R&D within areas such as
- identifying the oncogene drivers causing the cancer
- design new drugs that can inhibit the biological disease processes
- the two areas with particular focus are monoclonal antibody (MAB) research.and kinase inhibitor (NIB) research.MABs and NIBs are crucial in the development of cancer biomarkers.
- There are two different types of biomarkers that are of great R&D interest, namely the prognostic biomarker (indicate the prognosis of the specific cancer) and the predictive biomarkers (determining the effect or possibly the lack hereof) of a specific treatment
HUNT adds value in new diagnostics and treatment
With its large, homogenous population HUNT offers access to a unique database containing personal and family medical history since 1984 through three comprehensive surveys (HUNT 1, 2 and 3). HUNT contains a substantial number of parameters per participant and can support R&D, regulatory, and market initiatives (Table 3) with information on for example:
- Cancer indicators – prevalence of pre-cancer indicators and disease development
- Cancer accelerators and prevention – lifestyle parameters such as smoking, alcohol consumption, elevated cholesterol levels, obesity and various types of infections
- Cancer treatment – time of diagnosis, disease progression, treatment response etc.
- Co-morbidity – cancer, cardiovascular disease, infections etc.
- Pre-cancer biological material – samples drawn prior to the cancer diagnosis
