The German Cancer Aid Prize 2023 was awarded to Reinhard Büttner, Jürgen Wolf and Roman Thomas -

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Büttner, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Wolf und Prof. Dr. Roman Thomas I Photo: Regina Brodehser

Since 2018, the interdisciplinary 'National Network Genomic Medicine Lung Cancer' has developed into the world's largest lung cancer initiative. It emerged from the Cologne-based 'Genomic Medicine' network, which has been successfully promoting the implementation of personalized therapies in the treatment of patients with advanced lung cancer since 2010. German Cancer Aid has been funding 'nNGM Lung Cancer' since 2018, enabling it to expand nationwide. The network currently includes 28 centers, including all Comprehensive Cancer Centers funded by German Cancer Aid.

This network enables patients with advanced lung cancer to receive personalized treatment tailored to their individual needs. The German Cancer Aid Prize is endowed with 15,000 euros for each award winner.The prizewinners, Professor Dr. Reinhard Büttner, Professor Dr. Jürgen Wolf and Professor Dr. Roman Thomas, have significantly advanced the molecular diagnosis and therapy of lung cancer with their excellent work and great dedication in the "nNGM Lung Cancer" project. German Cancer Aid honors them for this.

"Professor Dr. Reinhard Büttner, Professor Dr. Jürgen Wolf and Professor Dr. Roman Thomas have decisively advanced the molecular diagnosis and therapy of lung cancer with their excellent work and great commitment in the 'nNGM Lung Cancer' project," said Anne-Sophie Mutter, President of German Cancer Aid, in honor of the award winners.

This network enables patients with advanced lung cancer to receive personalized treatment tailored to their individual needs. The German Cancer Aid Prize is endowed with 15,000 euros for each award winner.The prizewinners, Professor Dr. Reinhard Büttner, Professor Dr. Jürgen Wolf and Professor Dr. Roman Thomas, have significantly advanced the molecular diagnosis and therapy of lung cancer with their excellent work and great dedication in the "nNGM Lung Cancer" project. German Cancer Aid honors them for this.

The aim of the 'nNGM Lung Cancer' is to use the knowledge and dynamics of personalized cancer medicine. Patients' tumors are analyzed at the molecular level to identify changes that allow for targeted therapy as an alternative to chemotherapy. Before the advent of molecular diagnostics, only a microscopic examination of the removed tumor tissue could determine the appropriate therapy for the patient - be it surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Today, molecular diagnostics, such as those performed at the nNGM" centers, determine the type of treatment.

"The role of pathology involves analyzing tissue samples from tumors to extract and derive information. Subsequently, based on the results of the analysis, an individual treatment plan is then developed for the patient together with the other medical disciplines. Every tumor in which we find a treatable mutation receives personalized treatment," says Professor Dr. Reinhard Büttner, Director of the Institute of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy at the University Hospital of Cologne, current Congress President of the 36th German Cancer Congress (DKK) and member of the 'nNGM Lung Cancer' coordination team.

"Our motivation is to bring the enormous potential of genomic medicine for people with advanced cancer into the clinic in such a way that all patients in Germany can really benefit from it," says Professor Dr. Jürgen Wolf, Medical Director of the Center for Integrated Oncology (CIO) in Cologne and spokesman for the national Genomic Medicine Network. Currently, about two-thirds of patients with advanced lung cancer can be reached, or up to 17,000 patients per year, according to Professor Wolf. In the next two to three years, scientists hope to reach more or less all patients.

"After returning from my research stay in the USA, I was lucky enough to work with Jürgen Wolf and Reinhard Büttner in Cologne. Jürgen Wolf, Reinhard Büttner and I shared the vision of making the new findings from cancer genome research available to patients. So we set about implementing it: Jürgen Wolf in the field of treatment and clinical studies, Reinhard Büttner in diagnostics and I in the laboratory - each in their own place, but wonderfully complementary. It fills me with great joy and gratitude to see what has come out of this," says Professor Dr. Roman Thomas, Director of the Institute for Translational Genomics at the University of Cologne and co-founder of the 'NGM Lung Cancer' in Cologne.

"An exceptional quality shwon by these three awardees is their remarkable accomplishment in not in bridging the gap between the discovery of genetic mutations, the exact molecular diagnosis, and an individual therapy tailored to the individual patient, but also in bringing this into clinical practice via a network and directly benefiting the patients affected by lung tumors," said Professor Dr. Thomas Krieg, Professor Emeritus of Translational Matrix Biology and Vice President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, in his laudatory speech for the award winner.

"By awarding the German Cancer Aid Prize to outstanding personalities from the field of oncology, German Cancer Aid wants to express the great importance of cancer research in the fight against the disease," explains Gerd Nettekoven, Chairman of the Board of German Cancer Aid. "In doing so, we are acting in the spirit of the physician Dr. Wilhelm Hoffmann. He asked our organization - with the bequest he left us - to award an annual prize for outstanding achievements in oncology. We have been fulfilling this mission for 28 years."

CMMC News based on the  press release here by Jan Voelkel - Press and Communcation Team, University of cologne