Fight against cancer around the Mediterranean area: "Many hands make light work!"

Abstract

The geopolitical and strategic importance of the Mediterranean area is evident since a long time. In terms of health programs and means for cancer care, significant disparities have been reported between countries that borders the Mediterranean basin. AROME project began modestly in 2006 with a group of leaders who recognized the need to promote practical training of young people and, thus, contribute to reduce these inacceptable inequalities in terms of early diagnosis and management. Moreover, our project has been built from our belief that the socio-cultural specificity of this region, its epidemiology, availability of means for diagnosis and treatment, should impose a sustained regional research and better knowledge of tumor biology and identify the specificities that may require particular strategies of care that should not be based only on Western and Asian research data. We must thus take advantage of advances in the identification of intimate biological tumors to provide answers to our ignorance of the specific Mediterranean biology. In this paper, we illustrate this issue describing some particular cancers in this region such as breast and nasopharyngeal cancers. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.