The Clinical Cancer Research Hospital Programme (PHRC) Cancer

Last updated on: 06/20/2011

Every year since 1993, the Ministry of Health has published a circular announcing a call for proposals in which hospital teams receive 3 years of funding for clinical research projects. INCa has been managing the oncological component of this programme since 2005, in conjunction with DHOS (known as DGOS since March 2010).
The programme’s goals, defined by INCa, give priority to bringing about the following:

• Large therapeutic strategy trials in the form of co-operative multicentre clinical trials to facilitate the establishment of international clinical practice standards
• Trials on the clinical viability of innovative therapeutic and diagnostic techniques
• Studies on rare indicators for which few trials have yet been proposed
• Studies on specific populations (children, the elderly)

In addition to this, specific areas of focus are defined every year. For 2010, these include studies exploring inequalities in health, quality of life, reducing treatment toxicity over the medium and long term and palliative care.

Projects funded since 2005

Since 2005, 363 projects have been funded for a total of €98 million.
The majority of the projects funded are therapeutic “Huriet Act” biomedical research (drugs, radiotherapy, surgery). Only slightly more than a third of the projects involve studies on drug therapy, indicating that the PHRC gives preference to non-drug studies, which receive little support from sources other than public funding. Cell or gene therapy projects have also been chosen.
Up until 2009, studies could also focus on translational research. These now have their own dedicated call for proposals.
The programme also supports phase I monocentric or oligocentric projects (12 or more patients) as well as large randomised phase III trials (400 to 700 patients) which offers more patients the opportunity to participate in a quality clinical trial. A certain number of screening trials are also supported, as well as epidemiological surveys.

The projects funded relate to all tumour sites:

• Results of the 2011 call for proposals