The medical treatment we offer

A dedicated team of professionals offer optimal treatment and support to patients with cancer with empathy for the patients and their relatives.The patients are treated with anticancer medication, which may have a curativeor palliativeintention. In addition to state-of-the-art and innovative medical treatment for cancer, translational research is a hallmark of our department. New immunotherapeutic approaches, angiogenesis inhibitors as well as other new targeted agents are studied and new combination treatment strategies are being developed in collaboration with the departments of surgical oncology, radiotherapy, otolaryngology and gynaecology. Our goal is to minimize the side-effects of current and novel treatment strategies and to ensure that the quality of life of our patients is being optimized by supportive and palliative care. When curative treatment is no longer possible, palliative treatment, which may include direct anti-tumor therapy as well as palliative care are given to improve the quality of life.

Improve the standard-of-care treatment

The international standard of care is given for several advanced cancer types, because it has been proven to be most effective treatment until thus far. However, in an academic setting we continuously strive to improve the standard of care treatment. It is still not possible to predict whether a treatment will be effective in a particular patient and therefore, one of our aims is to develop new diagnostic tests to predict whether a specific treatment will be effective in an individual patient (personalized medicine).

To improve treatment outcome, our department focuses on the development of personalized medicine directed against tumor blood vessel formation (anti-angiogenic therapy) or targeting tumor signaling pathways and on the development of immunotherapy.

The emphasis of our research is on the following questions: 

  1. Testing the adequate dosing of new anticancer agents (phase-I research)
  2. Determining efficacy of new agents against specific tumors (phase-II research)
  3. Development of new combination treatment strategies of classical chemotherapy plus new targeted agents, or a combination of new agents with other treatment modalities, such as radiotherapy.

During the past several years, new treatment strategies combining surgery, radiotherapy and anticancer medicines have been developed. These intensive treatments require optimal multidisciplinary interactions of several different clinical specialisms. Therefore, the medical oncology department is involved in many multidisciplinary meetings each week to discuss the optimal treatment strategies for our patients including possible participation of patients in clinical trials.