Join the co-creation phase: Risk-based Early Detection of Pancreatic & Esophageal Cancer

Vroege opsporing van kanker met vergrootglas en kankercellen

No funding is currently available. This preparatory phase will inform a future funding initiative.

Background

Pancreatic and esophageal cancers are among the deadliest cancer types, with five-year survival rates of just 13% and 22%, respectively. Despite their relatively low incidence, their clinical and societal burden is disproportionately high due to typically late-stage diagnosis and limited curative options. Early detection offers one of the few viable strategies to improve outcomes     .

Building on a prior successful method to come to an interdisciplinary project with broad support in hereditary breast cancer, KWF sees a timely and strategic opportunity to extend this approach to cancers that are hard to treat and typically diagnosed too late. For both pancreatic and esophageal cancer, essential preconditions are increasingly aligning:

  • High-risk groups can be identified (e.g. familial predisposition, BRCA   mutations, new-onset diabetes for pancreatic cancer; Barrett’s esophagus for esophageal cancer);
  • Innovative detection technologies such as cfDNA, glycomics, AI-driven imaging, and minimally invasive sampling are emerging;
  • Infrastructure is already in place, including biobanks, cohorts, clinical networks, and national surveillance initiatives.

This makes these cancers suitable targets for a strategic, translational (research) initiative in risk-based early detection.

The Challenge

Despite promising developments, the field lacks a coordinated, cross-disciplinary approach to early detection. Several structural bottlenecks persist:

  • A lack of clinically validated biomarkers with sufficient specificity/sensitivity;
  • Imaging and detection tools that are still burdensome, costly, or inadequate for early stage identification;
  • Limited integration of innovation into clinical practice;
  • Insufficient risk stratification frameworks.

Without a system-wide approach, progress remains fragmented and the potential for real patient benefit is lost.

Join the co-creation phase

Tackling hard-to-treat cancers requires more than scientific excellence, it calls for alignment between what patients need, what researchers can deliver, and what funding instruments can enable.

Before launching the initiative, we are initiating an exploratory consultation. The goal: to jointly define what kind of research or innovation would make the greatest impact, and how future funding should be shaped to support it.

We invite researchers, clinicians, general practitioners, patient representatives, and other stakeholders to take part in this strategic consultation, focused on either pancreatic or esophageal cancer.
Your insights will directly influence a future initiative: not only in terms of topic and scope, but also in shaping the design of the funding instrument itself to make the most impact.

Want to take part?

Register your interest by emailing us at [email protected] before 31 October to secure your place in our December/January session.

Please indicate your area of focus (pancreatic or esophageal cancer) and your professional perspective.