By Lisa Luescher | Project Leader
After 13 years as president of the Swiss Cancer Research foundation, St. Gallen oncologist Prof. Thomas Cerny is handing over his office to Prof. Jakob Passweg from Basel.
Read an excerpt of the conversation with the two on the handing over of the baton.
Thomas Cerny: Cancer research has become the undisputed driving force in biomedicine over the last 10 to 20 years and has made immense progress. In particular, the targeted and in some cases extremely successful application of immunotherapy has revolutionized the field. The fact that Switzerland is among the world leaders in this field and that more and more of our research teams are turning to such tasks is vital for the people in our country. This development is only the beginning! Great resources are needed to promote research further. I am impressed how donors have remained loyal to us, even in such difficult times as now! Nevertheless, there is unfortunately also a great disappointment: It is our paralyzed European policy that denies researchers from Switzerland participation in "Horizon Europe", the world's largest international research program of the European Union. This is a painful, still open wound that must be mended as soon as possible! Switzerland must have access again.
Jakob Passweg: It is a great honor to take over the presidency of this important foundation, because it is the key player in cancer research in Switzerland. It is important to sense where the biggest research priorities will be in the future and to find the right balance between funding basic research projects, clinical research and research in areas such as cancer epidemiology, psychooncology, health services research, oncology care and others. At the same time, it is not always easy in Switzerland to find money for cancer research. And yet that is precisely what is important: cancer is one of the great challenges of the present and even more so of the future, because the number of cancer cases will increase dramatically in view of demographic developments.
Visit our website for the for the entire interview - about milestones, aspirations, and new goals at the Swiss Cancer Research foundation.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
