Launch of second European Cancer Research Fund...(ays is stifling cancer research. The imp...),Health

Over the last decade the fashion for ever increasing regulation across all domains clinical trials, healthcare data, human tissue has led to an undesirable increase in the unit cost of research in the absence of any tangible social benefit from many of these regulations.

Good research governance is essential but bureaucracy is absorbing too much of the global investment in cancer research. Bureaucracy and over-management remain constant dangers to progress. Funding organisations and government policy makers must guard against these dangers and, where necessary, simplify and harmonise.

Since the first survey published two years ago, nearly 60% of Member States have increased their funding of cancer research in real terms, yet 30% have not, said Prof. Sullivan. Indeed the major policy issue is the real differences in cancer research investment between the Member States themselves, rather than the prevailing gaps in cancer research funding between Europe and the USA, which have been a driving force for EU policy-making to date.

He continued by making a special plea to those EU countries which lag behind the 15 Member States which carry out the majority of the research.

It is clear that some governments are still failing to appropriately support cancer research. For these countries the need for specific policy actions to ensure a limited core of high quality research within their institutions - relative to their R&D budgets - is crucial if these Member States have aspirations to become major locations for cancer research in the future, he added.

The report also attempts, for the first time, to estimate the direct annual spend of the major pharmaceutical companies involved in cancer research.

We estimate the top pharmaceutical c
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