About the Sarcoma Accelerator Consortium
Sites of soft tissue sarcomas
Background on sarcomas and current treatment
Soft tissue sarcomas are a group of rare cancers that develop in the tissues that connect, support, or surround other structures or organs in the body. The standard treatment for soft tissue sarcomas that are diagnosed at an early stage is surgery. However, approximately 50% of patients who undergo surgery will relapse, with the disease spreading to other organs, at which point the cancer is incurable. Patients who are more likely to relapse or those whose disease has already spread at the time of diagnosis are sometimes referred to as patients with ‘high-risk’ soft tissue sarcoma, and these patients are often faced with poorer outcomes. Occasionally, chemotherapy is used as a pre-surgery treatment to reduce the tumour size and make it easier to remove.
About the Sarcoma Accelerator Consortium programme
The Sarcoma Accelerator Consortium is a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and researchers from the UK, Italy and Spain who are engaged in a five-year research programme on treatments for soft tissue sarcomas. The programme is generously funded by the cancer charities: Cancer Research UK, Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro, and Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer and will enable the Consortium to develop a series of innovative tools and resources designed to drive the development of effective personalised therapies for patients with sarcomas.
The mission of the Sarcoma Accelerator Consortium is to develop personalised treatments that are needed to improve the poor survival rates of patients with high-risk soft tissue sarcomas.