SIRIC: All components to transform world-class cancer research into comprehensive care

A label of excellence for multidisciplinary and integrated research

The National Cancer Institute has established a competitive policy of labelling Integrated Cancer Research Site (SIRIC). Their objective:

1) to provide new operational conditions for translational research in cancerology, in order to optimize and accelerate the production of new knowledge

2) to promote the dissemination and application of this knowledge in the treatment of cancer.

Veritable concentration of skills, SIRIC Montpellier Cancer brings together more than a thousand professionals from the university hospitals of Montpellier as well as public research organisations and Montpellier’s higher education faculties. Through the diverse approaches of its laboratories, the SIRIC consortium covers the whole range of research for which the ultimate goal is the improved understanding, prevention, detection and treatment of cancer.

After an initial call for applications launched in 2011, the INCa certified 8 SIRICs in France in 2012. Following a new call, the INCa renewed the labeling of eight SIRICs in 2017 for five years. SIRIC funding is provided jointly by an endowment from the INCa, the Ministry of Health (DGOS) and Inserm on behalf of the Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (Aviesan).

The SIRIC Montpellier Cancer

The SIRIC Montpellier Cancer is the only labeled site in the Greater South of France. It brings together the medical and research teams of the Montpellier Cancer Institute, Montpellier University Hospital, five biomedical research institutes, and three university research centers in human and social sciences, i.e. nearly 500 clinicians and researchers whose ultimate goal is to improve the understanding, prevention, screening and treatment of cancer.

Professor Marc Ychou, Montpellier SIRIC Director: “Our goal is to optimise the organisation of cancer research, to engage in innovative research programs and to strengthen the means of translational research: our ambition is to discover new pathways leading towards personalised medicine for the benefit of each patient with cancer.”

The SIRIC has a threefold mission of integration, structuring and valorisation:

Mission 1:

To develop and drive innovative research programs around three major themes which integrate such fundamental factors as translational and clinical dimensions and are conducted within a national and international collaborative network:

◦ Colorectal cancer: from the improvement of current treatments toward therapeutic innovation

◦ Optimizing delivery of internal and external radiation therapy

◦ Tumour escape: exploration of mechanisms and search for targets

Mission 2:

To set up the necessary conditions, in terms of infrastructures and resources, to carry out a research that responds to the expected criteria of excellence, innovation, integration and multidisciplinarity (technological platforms, research support structures, protected time, attractiveness for new researchers, etc.).

Mission 3:

To develop a program for the dissemination of knowledge and advanced research to health professionals and the general public in order to promote access to new medical practices and screening.

• Presentation leaflet of SIRIC Montpellier Cancer

 8 SIRICs certified for 5 years