What is FOSTER?
 

BACKGROUND

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer in adolescents and young adults. It is a rare cancer with no improvement in patient survival in the last four decades. More than one third of patients will die from metastatic disease, while survivors often suffer treatments’ long-term effects.

Improving survival, in terms of duration and quality, requires new therapies that control osteosarcoma tumor cells with metastatic potential and their favoring tumor microenvironment from diagnosis. Osteosarcoma complexity/heterogeneity in term of tumor cell genomic/epigenetic and biology, diversity of tumor ME, sparsity of appropriate preclinical models, and heterogeneity of therapeutic trials have rendered the task difficult. No European first line trial has been launched in over 15 years, and only a few at national level. In the relapse setting, few trials are available in Europe. The majority of European patients are not being offered access to new drugs or treatment strategies in Europe, despite an estimated 1135 new cases in the EU per year and a third experiencing relapse. Unlike other tumor groups, there is no common platform where clinicians and researchers in Europe can discuss, and no international biobanking, etc.

PRESENTATION

The FOSTER consortium (Fight OsteoSarcoma Through European Research) proposes to connect multidisciplinary and patient/parent advocate expertise, at a Pan-European level to improve biological, translational and clinical research on osteosarcoma, to ultimately improve survival.

With more than 350 members from across 19 countries, and 9 work packages from biology to late-effects, FOSTER consortium work is overseen by an Executive Committee, with the help of a project manager:

– to implement a strategic research plan agenda with regular meetings where knowledge sharing can be freely developed;

– to pursue the aim of gaining a comprehensive overview of current osteosarcoma biology knowledge and trial situation, and thus tackle the current gaps and remaining challenges in osteosarcoma.

OBJECTIVES

To improve outcome of patients with osteosarcoma, in terms of duration and quality of life of survivors.

Specific objectives

– To encourage multidisciplinary interactions between researchers, clinicians and patient/parent advocates to accelerate early new drug development;

– To promote collaborative translational research and biobanking in osteosarcoma;

– To promote clinical research in systemic and local therapies for all patients with osteosarcoma independently of resectability, tumor location and staging across all Europe, with integration of new therapies in randomized clinical trials and then into standard of care;

– To promote exchange of young investigators and clinicians in referral centers of the consortium;

– To promote educational meetings for young investigators and clinicians;

– To facilitate participation in age inclusive clinical trials with novel therapeutic agents for osteosarcoma;

– To increase our knowledge of local and systemic treatment late effects;

– To promote collaborative data sharing in osteosarcoma.

CONSORTIUM

The Consortium will be responsible for the development and maintenance of a strategy to strengthen, harmonize and optimize collaborative efforts by a network of clinicians, researchers, patient and parent advocates working at the European level to achieve the objectives and cover the current knowledge and treatment gap in Europe for osteosarcoma.

September 5, 2023

November 1, 2022

Fighting Osteosarcoma Through Research Together

by Jazzmin Huber