COLOSS - COLOn Screeening and Surveillance: Comparative Effectiveness of Colorectal Cancer Screening and Surveillance

The three main research projects unde the COLOSS project; NORCCAP; NordICC, and EPoS have the following status at project end of COLOSS: NORCCAP: 15-year analyses published. Currently the joint analyses with the three other RCT's in the World in this area are under submission for publication in medical journals. NordICC: 10-year analysis under submission for publication in a medical journal. EPOS: recruitment fullfilled, currently follow-up is ongoing, will continue for another 9 years. During the last year reporting period, the project group has published 56 scientific papers, thereof 29& in so-called group 2 journals, according to the Norwegian index.

Kvantifisering av effekt av colorektal screening

This application concerns the Clinical Effectiveness Research Group, which funded only three years ago has gone through a remarkable development and is now on the edge to become a world-leading research environment in cancer screening and surveillance. Funding from this application will enable to reach this goal within the next 5 years. Formal partnerships with leading institutions, such as Harvard, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Karolinska Institutet, Erasmus Medical Centre has been established. The fundament of the proposal is three unique large randomized controlled trials (based on own ideas and developed without industry involvement); the NORCCAP (NORwegian Colorectal Cancer Prevention) With 100,000 patients, NordICC (Nordic-European Initiative on Colorectal Cancer) with 98,000 patients, and EPoS (European Polyp Surveillance) With 30,000 patients. These trials are ground-breaking in nature, size and aims. They all have the potential to change clinical practice for cancer prevention and surveillance. All three signature trials have received funding for the trial interventions themselves (NFR and others). However, no funding mechanism (not EU, NFR, or elsewhere) provides funding for studies of this complexity and (above all) the long time frame required in cancer prevention trials (need to run for at least 10 years until first results are available). The big challenge for further development of our group is cutting-edge expertise in database management and biostatistics. At our stage of development, these facilities can no longer be project-based, but need to be established as part of sustainable infrastructure as our projects are getting to complex to be taken care of by smaller, project-based grants. Funding though the current application will enable us to continue the large projects which we have embarked on and ensure cutting-edge research also in the future.