Gynecological cancers : bridging the gap between research and cure

Abstract

Annually in the world, approximately 1.5 million women suffer from gynecological malignancies, which comprise 15% of the new cancer diagnoses in females. Of these malignancies, around 60% are classified as rare in the European population. Based on the specific work carried out as part of the Joint Action on Rare Cancers, the European Commission provided a definition and a list of rare tumours, together with advise for monitoring through population-based cancer registries and clinical databases, encouraging all efforts to make all available databases interoperable. When defining a rare gynecological tumor, the standardization of clinical and histopathological guidelines is pivotal both for the diagnosis and for the design of clinical trials for testing novel treatments.