OBJECTIVES: Updated 2009.

New strategies for a new era

ICIC (Canary Islands Cancer Research Institute) has been born to provide scientific answers to the specific problems of the Canary Islands in relation to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.  The following are strategic and specific objectives of ICIC which will guide us from 2009 onward:

2.1  General Strategic Objectives

• Promoting cancer research in the Canary Islands, by exploiting and improving human resources and materials available to the current research groups investigating in cancer, and provide attractive conditions for new groups to join in cancer research in the Canaries.
• Joining forces for basic, clinical, translational and population investigations in a sustained and continuous effort which would allow the best diagnosis and the highest innovative and quality therapies of cancer treatment in the Canary Islands.
• Build educational resources to improve the level of understanding of the origins, evolution and prospects for cancer treatment, in order to run cancer prevention campaigns to be effective in the Canaries. 
• Developing new knowledge-based sources of wealth in the Canaries with the support of industry generated from the Foundation ICIC (FICIC) for the development of new anticancer drugs and applied genomics.

2.2 Specific Objectives

Specifically, the letter of intent and objectives of the founders of ICIC had proposed the following specific objectives:

• Build educational resources to simplify the understanding of cancer across the population, employing new technologies and especially the Internet, to bring cancer education to the furthest corners of the Canaries.
• Strengthening the prevention of cancer by running awareness campaigns on the acquisition of healthy lifestyles habits, in relation to cancer, in collaboration with the ministries of Health, Education and public or private institutions with similar aims.
• Train more and better researchers and lab technicians in the field of cancer, and integrate them to create nationally or internationally competitive research groups working on the most frequent types of cancer affecting the Canary Islands population.
• Enhance the interactions between Canary cancer research groups with the most advance cancer research centres worldwide.
• Establish a line of permanent scientific cooperation with Latin America, especially with those countries where there is an increased Canary citizens presence.
• Strengthening research on the incidence of cancer in the Canaries, in particular with molecular epidemiology methodologies addressing:
  • the types of cancer with more disturbing implications.
    
  • the types of cancer with familial incidence.
    
  • the types of cancer booming today.
• Promote the development of molecular diagnostic techniques and imaging applicable to patients in the Canaries.
• Contribute with the necessary methodologies to ensure that Clinical Research groups associated with the ICIC could participate in international trials of cancer innovative therapies.

2.3  Social Implementation of ICIC. New strategies.

With the renewal of the Board of Directors of ICIC unanimously approved by the ICIC Assembly of 13th November 2008, we can and must be faithful to all the above goals, deepening into this Institute’s mission toward the patients, their families, the society and researchers of all Canary Islands. In the next lines it is summarised some of the initiatives that will complement the currently implemented ones already undertaken by various departments of our Institute:

• With regard to patients, we have to promote a closer collaboration with patients’ associations all over the Canaries, attempting to unite criteria for action and trying to accommodate the highest number of patients affected by the most diverse pathologies.  In fact, this undoubtedly will provide a major social impact to our Institute.
• With respect to their families and society in general, we will further enhance our program/campaign Canary Against Cancer (CAC), extending it to the islands where we currently have a lower presence and unifying the contents of the campaign, so that, we can foster a learning material and presentations/talks, which serve as support to the concepts and guidelines that the Institute understands will be important to improve the knowledge that the Canary citizenship harbours and will gain on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
• With regard to the universities and companies, we will encourage preferentially the development of initiatives led by young researchers who may have a university consolidation, but above all a business one.  CEAMED S.A. (www.ceamedsa.com) a company related to FICIC, can be a good travelling companion for those young researchers who hold good ideas and wish to start a career as bio-entrepreneurs and need support from the business point of view to  develop them.
• Finally, we will develop aspects related with the most important missions of ICIC, that is to promote research and training in cancer in our islands.

In order to achieve all these goals, it is necessary that ICIC makes a powerful argument to convince the Canaries social and political forces:

• ICIC holds all the requirements to lead the fight against cancer in the region. This has been identified by the Canary Islands Parliament in a unanimous vote to support the ICIC.
• ICIC aims to bring results from the laboratory bench to patient’s bedside, and thus putting cancer research at the service of the care of Canary citizens suffering from cancer.
• The resources that can capture ICIC to investigate cancer problems in the Canaries, will immediately revert to improving the health of the population.
• In order to achieve the established objectives, ICIC works with the principles of austerity and optimisation of resources. Thus, it is by creating an efficient structure without duplicating resources already existing in hospitals or universities how we make progress in the fight against cancer.

Probably, all these actions will improve the presence of ICIC in society, allowing us to carry out actions directed to increase the economic involvement of  the Canary society with the Institute, thereby mobilising financial resources, political and social ones in order to meet its goal of leading the “Fight Against Cancer in the Canaries”.