The UK's contribution to cancer control in low-income and middle-income countries.

Cancer mortality rates in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are unacceptably high, requiring both collaborative global effort and in-country solutions. Experience has shown that working together in policy, clinical practice, education, training, and research leads to bidirectional benefit for LMICs and high-income countries. For over 60 years, the UK National Health Service has benefited from recruitment from LMICs, providing the UK with a rich diaspora of trained health-care professionals with links to LMICs. A grassroots drive to engage with partners in LMICs within the UK has grown from the National Health Service, UK academia, and other organisations. This drive has generated a model that rests on two structures: London Global Cancer Week and the UK Global Cancer Network, providing a high-value foundation for international discussion and collaboration. Starting with a historical perspective, this Series paper describes the UK landscape and offers a potential plan for the future UK's contribution to global cancer control. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges facing UK partnerships with LMICs in cancer control. The UK should harness the skills, insights, and political will from all partners to make real progress.

Position statement on ethics, equipoise and research on charged particle radiation therapy.

The use of charged-particle radiation therapy (CPRT) is an increasingly important development in the treatment of cancer. One of the most pressing controversies about the use of this technology is whether randomised controlled trials are required before this form of treatment can be considered to be the treatment of choice for a wide range of indications. Equipoise is the key ethical concept in determining which research studies are justified. However, there is a good deal of disagreement about how this concept is best understood and applied in the specific case of CPRT. This report is a position statement on these controversies that arises out of a workshop held at Wolfson College, Oxford in August 2011. The workshop brought together international leaders in the relevant fields (radiation oncology, medical physics, radiobiology, research ethics and methodology), including proponents on both sides of the debate, in order to make significant progress on the ethical issues associated with CPRT research. This position statement provides an ethical platform for future research and should enable further work to be done in developing international coordinated programmes of research.

Celebrating oncology nursing: from adversity to opportunity. The Global Power of Oncology Nursing Conference held virtually on the 15th November 2022.

The Global Power of Oncology Nursing held their 3rd annual conference on 'Celebrating Oncology Nursing: From Adversity to Opportunity'. The conference, held virtually, addressed three major nursing challenges: health workforce and migration, climate change and cancer nursing within humanitarian settings. Around the world, nurses are working in situations of adversity, whether due to the ongoing pandemic, humanitarian crises such as war or floods, shortage of nurses and other health workers, and high clinical demands leading to overwork, stress and burnout. The conference was held in two parts in order to take into account different time zones. Three hundred and fifty participants attended from 46 countries, with part of the conference being held in both English and Spanish. It was an opportunity for oncology nurses around the world to share their experiences and the realities for their patients seeking care and their families. The conference took the form of panel discussions, videos, and individual presentations from all six WHO regions and highlighted the importance of oncology nurses role in expanding beyond caring for individuals and their families, to tackle wider issues, such as nurse migration, climate change and care within humanitarian settings.

A systematic literature review of the clinical and cost-effectiveness of hadron therapy in cancer.

BACKGROUND: In view of the continued increase in the number of hadron (i.e. neutron, proton and light or heavy ion) therapy (HT) centres we performed a systematic literature review to identify reports of the efficacy of HT. METHODS: Eleven databases were searched systematically. No limit was applied to language or study design. Established experts were contacted for unpublished data. Data on outcomes were extracted and summarised in tabular form. RESULTS: Seven hundred and seventy three papers were identified. For proton and heavy ion therapy, the number of RCTs was too small to draw firm conclusions. Based on prospective and retrospective studies, proton irradiation emerges as the treatment of choice for some ocular and skull base tumours. For prostate cancer, the results were comparable with those from the best photon therapy series. Heavy ion therapy is still in an experimental phase. CONCLUSION: Existing data do not suggest that the rapid expansion of HT as a major treatment modality would be appropriate. Further research into the clinical and cost-effectiveness of HT is needed. The formation of a European Hadron Therapy Register would offer a straightforward way of accelerating the rate at which we obtain high-quality evidence that could be used in assessing the role of HT in the management of cancer.

Controversies in clinical trials in proton radiotherapy: the present and the future.

Proponents of proton radiotherapy have cited the dose distribution characteristics of proton beams as evidence of its superiority over photon radiotherapy. Outcomes after photon radiotherapy remain suboptimal owing to poor local control and normal-tissue toxicity in many clinical indications. Critics of proton radiotherapy have noted the relative lack of prospective data from clinical trials showing a benefit for proton radiotherapy despite its theoretical advantages. Questions remain with regard to physical uncertainties in proton dose delivery and variations in their radiobiological effect in different tissues and tumors. Although prospective data have been scant in the past, clinical trials using proton radiotherapy are now being conducted with increasing frequency. However, very few of these are randomized controlled trials comparing protons directly with photons. Randomized controlled trials should remain the ideal tool for research in proton radiotherapy: they should be focused on areas where clinical equipoise is present, ideally in tumor sites where there is a low risk of systemic failure, a high risk of local progression, and/or a high risk of toxicity with conventional therapy. Proton radiotherapy centers should develop prospective registries with the goal of long-term data collection on an international basis to support the evidence provided by observational studies and comparative effectiveness research trials.

Stereotactic radiotherapy (SABR) for the treatment of primary non-small cell lung cancer; systematic review and comparison with a surgical cohort.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: To assess the efficacy of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) through a systematic review of all relevant publications from 2006 to the present compared to controls treated with surgery. In the absence of Grade I evidence, the objective outcome data should form the basis for planning future studies and commissioning SABR services. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Standard systematic review methodology extracting patient and disease characteristics, treatment and outcome data from published articles reporting patient data from populations of 20 or more Stage I NSCLC patients treated with SABR with a median follow up of minimum of 1 year. The individual outcome measures were corrected for stage and summary weighted outcome data were compared to outcome data from a large International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) cohort matched for stage of disease with survival as the principal endpoint and local control (local progression free survival - local PFS) as the secondary endpoint. RESULTS: Forty-five reports containing 3771 patients treated with SABR for NSCLC were identified that fulfilled the selection criteria; both survival and staging data were reported in 3171 patients. The 2 year survival of the 3201 patients with localized stage I NSCLC treated with SABR was 70% (95% CI: 67-72%) with a 2 year local control of 91% (95% CI: 90-93%). This was compared to a 68% (95% CI: 66-70) 2 year survival of 2038 stage I patients treated with surgery. There was no survival or local PFS difference with different radiotherapy technologies used for SABR. CONCLUSIONS: Systematic review of a large cohort of patients with stage I NSCLC treated with SABR suggests that survival outcome in the short and medium term is equivalent to surgery for this population of patients regardless of co-morbidity. As selection bias cannot be assessed from the published reports and treatment related morbidity data are limited, a direct comparison between the two treatment approaches should be a priority. In the meantime, SABR can be offered to stage I patients with NSCLC as an alternative to surgery.

Establishing an evidence-base for breast cancer control in developing countries.

Reports about breast cancer (BC) research in low and middle income countries (LMCs) are difficult to access. A bibliographic database was constituted and is described in the present review. Six databases and cancer conference proceedings were searched. The search included publications focusing on the prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment and supportive/palliative care of BC in LMCs (2000-2008). Biological/genetic studies or animal studies were excluded. In all, 44,096 publications were identified of which 4362 met the inclusion criteria, including 210 reports of randomized controlled trials. Only 53% of publications were indexed in Medline. Publications about treatment represented the largest contribution (29%). Mainland China produced the most published research (18%). Only 2.4% of all publications related to palliative care of BC patients. More research is needed in the fields of BC prevention, awareness-raising, early detection, and palliative care in LMCs. Systematic reviews are needed to select those studies that can be safely regarded as "best evidence".