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24 September 2020

World Cancer Research Day: teaming up for a cancer-free world

The fifth edition of World Cancer Research Day aims to raise awareness on the importance of cancer research and issues a call to action for international collaboration to address the increasing challenges in fighting cancer.

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World Cancer Research Day is a global and multidisciplinary research movement uniting 89 organisations and more than half a million people. It seeks to raise awareness of the importance of cancer research as a key driver of advances in prevention and therapeutic strategies that increase survival and reduce the global cancer burden.

Launched by 11 organisations including UICC,1 the first World Cancer Research Day campaign was held in 2017, with the slogan “For the future of cancer research, do not stand still”. It assessed the impact of an interruption in cancer research on patients and society, estimating that a pause in research would lead to one cancer death every two seconds in the world by 2030.

Current disruptions to cancer prevention, treatment, clinical trials and research due to coronavirus have turned this hypothetical situation into reality, at least in part. The pandemic has revealed that the interruption in cancer research and access to cancer diagnosis might have important consequences in the near future and has highlighted that cancer research must not stagnate, even in these challenging times. 

The theme of the fifth edition of World Cancer Research Day, “Team up for cancer research” therefore takes on a new urgency, focusing on the need for enhanced cooperation between the world’s leading cancer organisations and to strengthen international collaborative research that offers new perspectives and technologies for greater progress in cancer control.

Join the movement and sign the World Declaration for Cancer Research to help move towards a tomorrow without cancer.

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1 Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), the International Agency on Research on Cancer (IARC), European Association for Cancer Research (EACR), European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), National Cancer Institute, part of the United States National Institutes of Health (NCI/NIH), Cancer Research UK (CRUK), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), The Dutch Cancer Society, and Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) 

Last update

Monday 28 September 2020

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