The SIOPE strategic plan: a European cancer plan for children and adolescents

Cancer in young people is rare, but it is still a major health issue in Europe. Each year, more than 6,000 young people in Europe die of cancer. There are more than 300,000 European childhood cancer survivors (in 2020, they will be nearly half a million): two-thirds of them have some late side effects of treatment, that are severe and impact on the daily life of half of those affected. Within the European Network for Cancer research in Children and Adolescents (ENCCA), SIOPE and the European paediatric haematology-oncology community have established a longterm sustainable Strategic Plan to increase the cure rate and the quality of survivorship for children and young people with cancer over the next ten years. The ultimate goal is to increase the disease- and late-effect- free survival after 10 years from the disease, and beyond. Seven medical and scientific objectives have been set up to achieve these goals: 1. Innovative treatments: to introduce safe and effective innovative treatments (i.e. new drugs, new technologies) into standard care; 2. Precision cancer medicine: to use improved risk classification as well as biological characteristics of both the tumour and patient (such as molecular and immunological factors) to help guide decisions on which therapies to use; 3. Tumour biology: to increase knowledge of tumour biology and speed up translation from basic research to clinical care to benefit patients; 4. Equal access: to bring about equal access across Europe to standard care (in both diagnosis and treatment), expertise and clinical research; 5. TYA: to address the specific needs of teenagers and young adults (TYA), in cooperation with adult oncology; 6. Quality of survivorship: to address the consequences of cancer treatment such as long-term side effects, to better understand the genetic background/risk of an individual, and to improve quality of life of childhood cancer survivors; 7. Causes of cancer: to understand the causes of paediatric cancers and to address prevention wherever possible