Major campaign to raise colon cancer awareness in Germany

Newsdesk Major campaign to raise colon cancer awareness in Germany and encourage people to go for screening. A PR agency, Michael Conrad & Leo Burnett, Frankfurt, produces the advertisements free of charge, and a film is also being produced. The Foundation recently organised an international workshop, involving chairmen and presidents of major German cancer foundations and medical professional bodies, as well as some of their counterparts from the USA. The result was the Munich Declaration, which called for cooperation and concerted action by all interest groups – doctors, health insurance companies, and those involved in public-health legislation. Health insurance companies, for example, are asked to remunerate colorectal cancer screening programmes. This would give physicians an incentive to encourage their patients to participate in the necessary examinations. Courtesy of Michael Conrad & Leo Burnett

March 2001 saw the launch of a massive media campaign to raise colon cancer awareness in Germany. Every year, more than 50 000 Germans are diagnosed with colon cancer and almost 30 000 patients die of this disease. However, the Felix Burda Foundation has now set the ambitious goal of reducing the number of colon cancer deaths in Germany by half within the next 5 years. Colon cancer remains asymptomatic for a long time, but early One of the pictures used in the campaign stages are easy to detect with appropriate screening measures, such the USA, where initiatives to raise as testing for occult blood every year. colon cancer awarenes in the general Routine coloscopy, performed every population have resulted in a 10 years in people from age 50 is even reduction of colon cancer mortality to more effective. Christa Maar, CEO of 35% of patients with the disease. the Foundation, says, “The chances of With the backing of one of survival are 90% if the cancer is Germany’s largest media concerns, detected in time; it is therefore obvious the Burda group, whose readership that prevention measures would make numbers 4 million per week, the a difference”. However, relatively few Foundation has started to place people in Germany participate in advertisements in the print media. screening programmes, in contrast to These concentrate on the joy of life

Martina Habeck

NASA and NCI join forces to work on biomolecular sensors In 20 years time, it may be possible to use miniaturised biosensor technology to detect molecular signatures associated with precancerous events in the body, in real time, and to relay that data to a miniaturised processing platform that can take action to treat those changes. To that end, NASA and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA have agreed to work towards some common goals over the next 5 years, and are currently considering proposals from all kinds of scientists, from oncologists to astrophysicists. “Last year, the two institutions signed a Memorandum of Agreement to explore joint programmes in fundamental molecular biology, miniaturisation, sensor development, signal amplification, data mining, and bioinformatics,” explains Carol Dahl, Director of the Office of Technology and Industrial Relations at NCI (Bethesda, MD, USA). This year has seen the request for proposals for NCI/NASA contracts or 328

grants. “The deadline for receipt was April 30, so we do not yet know exactly how many projects will be funded, but I estimate between 15 and 20 will start in January 2002, with another 15–20 beginning in early 2003”, adds Dahl. In total, the 30–40 awards will be worth $80 million over the next 4 years, with the first spin-off applications, probably tools for detection of molecular markers in vitro, expected within 2 years. Some of the projects will follow from research done within the NCI’s Unconventional Innovations Programme (UIP). Although the new NCI/NASA awards will be entirely complementary, they will go even further than UIP and will represent a new scale of multidisciplinary collaboration. Projects linked to cancer diagnosis are likely to centre around clever chemistry and the use of nanoparticles to detect molecular signatures related to precancerous events. Says Louis Ostrach (Office of

Biological and Physical Research, NASA, Washington, DC, USA), “NASA is concerned mainly about two types of radiation risk”. The first is short-duration exposure to relatively high levels of radiation in, for example, a solar particle event. “This could deplete cells in sensitive tissues, such as bone marrow, intestinal epithelium, and skin, and could seriously affect health and performance in the short term,” she says. The second – exposure to solar and galactic radiation on interplanetary voyages – could enhance cancer risk and damage brain, reproductive, and other tissues.” The development of technologies that can detect molecular signals from cancer and deliver signature-specific treatment should enable early diagnosis and better survival of cancer patients on Earth, but it would also enable mitigation of some of the major health risks associated with space travel”, concludes Ostrach. Kathryn Senior THE LANCET Oncology Vol 2 June 2001

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