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Cancer needs to be conquered
because it affects us all…
But how? |
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Find out about GERCOR …
A group full of promise with more than 450 doctors as members who, for the past five years, through their clinical research efforts, have been coming up with fundamentally new solutions to illnesses:
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> A huge network
The ability to harness a wide variety of abilities so that treatment can be distributed better to patients.
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> Efficiency
A longer life expectancy.
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> Confort
A better quality of life during the illness
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> Safety
Less toxicity or side effects from treatment.
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Message from the Chairman
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As we enter the third millenium, our society is more than ever confronted with a scientific challenge such as we have never encountered : to conquer cancer, which is still the second biggest killer in France.
Perceiving that therapeutic advances were moving too slowly, were too fragmented, and that results were too scattered, in 1997 we created GERCOR, to offer other solutions to people affected by cancer.
Our sole mission is to improve the care of patients affected by cancer by developing clinical research : we care for our patients with known therapeutic weapons or those which are in development by using innovative protocols that are effective and that comply with ethical rules.
As you know, this mission is extremely challenging.
Therefore, we thank you for your support.
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Professeur Aimery de GRAMONT
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GERCOR: a huge network of physicians
mobilized against cancer
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In an effort to ensure that any patient has access to our treatments, we have created a network that now counts more than 450 attending physicians in France and throughout the world, which has a light, independent and dynamic structure as its core, which is well suited for fulfilling our objectives.
The doctors who are members of GERCOR pool and concentrate their abilities on joint projects and optimize the distribution of the results they achieve.
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Mobilizing abilities
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To optimize patient care, the founding members of GERCOR understood that they needed to :
- pool abilities on joint projects and optimize the distribution of the results they achieve,
- create a huge network of investigating physicians, whether they serve in public hospitals or are in private practice,
- promote the inclusion of young, able doctors who are motivated by clinical research.
To meet this need, GERCOR arose in 1997 out of the merger of two clinical research groups that had been in operation for 10 years, but which had been independent up till then :
1. Le GERCOD : the Study and Research Group into Ovarian and Digestive Cancer,
2.l'IGOR : Inter-group for Oncology and Radiotherapy.
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Multydisciplinarity
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A booming world-wide network
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More than 200 private or public centers are currently participants in GERCOR studies,
More than 450 doctors who are members of GERCOR undertake to share their knowledge and activity on a permanent basis to develop clinical research to combat cancer.
GERCOR conducts studies nationally and world-wide.
GERCOR's goal is to promote international cooperation with foreign physicians and the application of its treatments :
1. on an European scale: Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark
2. on a global scale: Israel, Australia, Canada and the USA .
GERCOR signs publications in French and English in specialist journals and takes an active part in international congresses (both oral presentations and poster sessions)..
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A light, independent and dynamic structure
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GERCOR is an independent non-profit organization, governed by the French 1901 law.
Operating costs are kept low :
> a central office in Paris houses the administration and the secretariat,
> a mobile team of clinical research officers whose job is to verify data collection from each study performed in all the centers involved.
To enhance and expand its activities, GERCOR will recruit additional full-time employees so that it can meet the criteria of professionalism set by the group.
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Our mission : optimize patient care
by providing innovative treatments
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Gercor concentrates its efforts on only one mission : clinical research.
GERCOR's doctors treat their patients with the latest treatments using new therapeutic weapons, paying attention to their efficiency and their tolerance.
GERCOR's first priority is immediate therapautic benefit for patients :
The goal of so-called phase II treatments is to prove the therapeutic effectiveness, to evaluate the effectiveness/safety, and to examine undesirable side effects.
The goal of so-called phase III treatments is to demonstrate the superiority of a treatment that has come out of phase II over the standard treatment of the cancer concerned.
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Thanks to its network, Gercor offers patients
easy access to its up-to-date treatments
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To achieve this goal, GERCOR :
- stimulates the inclusion into its network of the greatest number of physicians involved in the treatments it is conducting,
- offers vital logistical assistance to research physicians whose job is to direct and monitor the application of the treatments to patients.
Such help includes :
1. information transmission,
2. the drafting of administrative and financial requirements to do with each therapeutic trial,
3. the management of inclusion and randomization of patients for each trial,
4. filling in each patient's data in the observation notebooks by our clinical research technicians,
5. organizing information sessions for each scientific committee,
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Initial results since 1997
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Treatments that are more effective and better tolerated by patients
A longer life expectancy
A better quality of life during the illness
Less toxicity or side effects from treatment
That means :
- 8 protocols approved
- 16 protocols in progress
- 7 protocols in preparation
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Our ethics
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First of all we protect our patients by complying
with the ethical dimension
GERCOR physicians keep to Good Clinical Practices and rigorously comply with the principles laid down by the Hurriet law passed on December 20, 1988, concerning the protection of persons volunteering for biomedical research.
- The patient signs an enlightened consent form before she or he is included in the treatment concerned,
- GERCOR takes out the necessary insurance policies that guarantee its public liability with respect to medical research,
- The final protocol passes through the approval of the CCPPRB, the French consultative committees on the protection of persons in biomedical research.
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GERCOR and transparency
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Our code of ethics with regard to our partners relies on rigor and transparency in allocating our resources.
The grants and subsidies that GERCOR receives are used exclusively for financing clinical research :
- the decision to allocate the funds is done on a consensus basis,
- the funds received are never used to cover any personal costs or to gain, individual advantage for a particular member or group of members,
- A great rigor is applied in the management of operating costs.
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