International collaboration secures over €11 million for rare cancer clinical trials

BRUSSELS - Anticancer Fund announces the results of an international call for research proposals launched under ATTRACT, or Accelerate Together Rare Cancer Treatment, a European charity partnership. Over €11 million has been allocated to two late-phase rare cancer clinical trials.

Through its central role in the ATTRACT partnership, Anticancer Fund has helped bring together funders, researchers and patient advocates to make these multinational academic trials possible.

The selected projects will address critical gaps in treatment options for people with rare cancers, where evidence-based therapeutic options remain limited. After a rigorous two-stage review process – including assessment by an independent Scientific Evaluation Committee and a Patient Advocacy Committee – two high-impact trials were selected for funding:

SAFIR IMPACT BTC: precision medicine in biliary tract cancer

International Coordinator: Julien Edeline – Centre Eugène Marquis, Rennes, France
Consortium: Julien Edeline (France), Angela Lamaca (Spain), Ivan Borbath (Belgium), Marjolein Homs (The Netherlands)

Biliary tract cancers (BTC) are rare cancers with a growing incidence and poor prognosis. While precision medicine is already routinely used, patients with localised BTC, who undergo surgery still face a high risk of recurrence.

This phase III trial will test a precision medicine approach in the adjuvant setting, after surgery, in patients with localised BTC. The goal is to increase relapse-free survival by better tailoring treatment to the molecular characteristics of each tumour.

This trial is supported by Anticancer Fund, Fondation ARC, Kom op tegen Kanker, KWF Dutch Cancer Society, and Spanish Association Against Cancer Scientific Foundation.

ARI-chALL: academic CAR T-cell therapy for paediatric B-ALL

International Coordinator: Susana Rives – Fundació Privada Per A La Recerca I La Docència Sant Joan De Déu (FSJD) / Hospital Sant Joan De Déu (HSJD), Spain
Consortium: Susana Rives (Spain), Barbara De Moerloose (Belgium), Friso Calkoen (The Netherlands), André Baruchel (France), Franco Locatelli (Italy)

ARI-0001 is the first fully academic CAR T-cell therapy developed and produced in Europe. It is currently approved in Spain for adult patients under the Hospital Exemption Clause.

The ARI-chALL trial will extend the evaluation of ARI-0001 to paediatric patients with first relapse of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL), fulfilling the EMA requirements for a Paediatric Investigational Plan. This trial is an important step in assessing an academically developed CAR T-cell therapy for children, outside of a purely commercial framework.

This trial is supported by Fondation ARC, Kom op tegen Kanker, KWF Dutch Cancer Society, and Spanish Association Against Cancer Scientific Foundation.

Why rare cancer trials need international cooperation

Although each rare cancer is uncommon on its own, taken together they represent a substantial part of the cancer burden:

• Rare cancers account for around 22% of all new cancer cases.
• A cancer is considered “rare” when its incidence is under 6 cases per 100.000 people per year.
• There are up to 244 different rare cancer types across children, adolescents and adults.
• The 5-year survival rate for adults with rare cancers is about 48.5%, illustrating a high unmet need.

Because the number of patients per cancer type and per country is low:

• Many pharmaceutical companies see limited economic incentive to invest.
• It is difficult to conduct robust clinical trials within a single country.

ATTRACT addresses this challenge by uniting multiple European charities to:

• Pool financial resources and expertise.
• Enable cross-border clinical trials that recruit patients from several countries.
• Overcome the main barrier in rare cancer research: too few patients per country to generate strong evidence alone.

“By working together across Europe, we can fund trials that no single country could deliver alone. This partnership reflects our shared ambition to ensure that patients with rare cancers receive the needed evidence-based treatments”, says Rica Capistrano, Director New Projects at Anticancer Fund.

Anticancer Fund’s role in ATTRACT

Rare cancer research is often fragmented and underfunded, making collaboration across borders essential. Within ATTRACT, or Accelerate Together Rare Cancer Treatment, Anticancer Fund plays a central and enabling role by:

Connecting researchers, funders and patient advocates across different European countries.

Supporting a transparent and structured peer-review process that combines scientific and patient perspectives.

Ensuring that promising academic research can move into late-phase clinical trials and closer to clinical practice.

By supporting the trial SAFIR IMPACT BTC, Anticancer Fund contributes to bringing precision medicine into a new stage of care in biliary tract cancer, with the potential to improve long-term outcomes for patients with this aggressive disease.

This is aligned with Anticancer Fund’s mission to support patient-centred, independent clinical research that would otherwise be unlikely to receive funding.