The project is ambitious. Institut Curie plans to create a structure entirely dedicated to women’s cancers which will combine all medical, paramedical and scientific expertise, as well as industry and patient associations. It will focus on research, care, prevention, training and technology transfer. Because it is now a question of intensifying innovation as well as research and care expertise in the fight once morest these cancers which affect 76,000 women in France each year. The majority of them suffer from breast cancer, diagnosed in 60,000 women per year (median age 63), which will be the subject of the annual “Pink October” campaign next week. Ten years following the first diagnosis, 15 to 20% of these cases recur. Among them, so-called triple negative breast cancers, the most at risk of relapse (20 to 30%).
Highly contrasting survival rates
The second most common female cancer is that of the endometrium which affects 8,220 women per year, at a median age of 68 years. It is followed by ovarian cancer. It accounts for 5,200 new cases per year, but the 5-year (40%) and 10-year (32%) survival rate is the lowest. With a lower prevalence, with 3,900 cases per year, cancers of the cervix and vagina (induced HPV) affect younger women (median age 53 years), the 5-year survival rates being respectively 86% and 65%. Finally, vulvar cancer strikes a thousand women each year at a median age of 77 years. For this cancer, the survival rates are very contrasted depending on the stage at treatment.
The proposed structure will also aim to better understand recurrences and, more broadly, the occurrence of these six cancers according to the impact of the specificities of the biological clock of women, a determining factor in better preventing the appearance of cancers in patients at risk. This project will be led by Dr Anne Vincent-Salomon, pathologist, specialist in female cancers and head of the diagnostic and theranostic medicine unit at Institut Curie. As Europe’s leading center for the treatment of breast cancer, but also the leading center for the fight once morest cancer in terms of the number of patients treated, Institut Curie already concentrates two-thirds of its staff on female cancers and no less than 30 teams of researchers. It is therefore logical that the new structure will integrate all the multidisciplinary resources of the Institut Curie and the establishments of the University of Paris Sciences & Lettres (PSL). This future center of excellence will be submitted for funding to the call for projects to create new IHU (University Hospital Institutes), provided for in the France 2030 Plan, which will close on November 7.