Fondation Cancer and the National Research Fund (Fonds National de la Recherche - FNR) have signed a multi-year collaboration agreement for 2020-23 to support cancer research; four projects were already selected in 2020 for a total of €2.8 million.

Marc Schiltz, Secretary General of the FNR, and Dr Carole Bauer, President of Fondation Cancer, welcomed this new cooperation between the two establishments. By combining their efforts, the FNR and Fondation Cancer aim to encourage high-quality scientific research in the field of fundamental and applied cancer research.

Dr Carole Bauer explained that the collaboration agreement allows Fondation Cancer to benefit from the expertise and professional network of the FNR in the evaluation by international experts of the research projects submitted. She noted: “It is research that is important to our patients. It gives hope. All my patients in consultation ask me what are the new avenues, what are the new drugs that are arriving on the market. So it's only by promoting research that we can move forward".

According to Marc Schiltz, the FNR-Fondation Cancer collaboration will help to harmonise cancer research at the national level and to make it even more competitive at the international level. He said: "We bring our expertise in the field of evaluating research projects according to rigorous quality criteria. For its part, Fondation Cancer is obviously very well connected with professional health circles, and especially with patients. For us, this therefore represents the unique opportunity to publicise and promote cancer research in Luxembourg to those audiences who are directly concerned".

2020 projects

- "Investigating the role of the microbiome in colorectal cancer", Elisabeth Letellier (PhD) at University of Luxembourg. Budget: €863,000

- "Glioma Longitudinal AnalySiS in Luxembourg (GLASS-LUX)", Prof. Simone Niclou (PhD) at Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH). Budget: €850,000

- "Reprogramming of the leukemic microenvironment by small extracellular vesicles: from characterization to therapeutic application- EVIL", Jérôme Paggetti (PhD) at LIH. Budget: €563,000

- "Characterization of the tumor and Its microenvironment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia", Etienne Moussay (PhD) at LIH. Budget: €571,000