The Metronomics Global Health Initiative combines cutting-edge scientific research, new business models and social innovation to develop alternative anti-cancer strategies at the service of children in the developing world.
We need new business models to meet the health needs of the poorest population of the world: as of today, 90% of the market addresses the needs of the 15% richest.
On the other hand, 80% of all children live in developing countries, 200,000 of them being diagnosed with cancer each year. These children have only very limited access to curative treatments and only about 25% will survive (in high-income countries, approximately 75% of the 50,000 children diagnosed with cancer each year survive).
Many problems prevent the development of efficient anti-cancer strategies in developing countries: availability of drugs and treatment facilities, cost and toxicities of treatment, distance to pediatric oncology units, compliance with treatment, delayed diagnosis, prior consultation of traditional practitioners and cultural barriers. Building up constraint-adapted, realistic therapeutic strategies for children suffering from cancer in these countries is therefore a must.
Through the building of hybrid forms of institutional support, the smart development of cheap and non-toxic sustainable protocols, the innovative search for generous financing and the empowerment of local physicians, we want to be the pioneers of emerging and promising sustainable strategies to fight cancer for children in developing countries.
These strategies rely on : 1) the frequent oral administration of “old” anticancer drugs at low doses (metronomic chemotherapy); 2) the use of “old” non anticancer drugs for which anticancer properties have been unveiled (drug repositioning). These strategies allow developing a non toxic, cheap, easy to administrate, treatment of cancer that is well suited for treating cancer in developing countries.
Our long term goal is to play a role in the implementation of sustainable anti-cancer strategies in the developing world, having developed a network to create synergies between doctors, their medical associations, healthcare companies, governments, international institutions, concerned citizens, etc.
We would like to be known as those who dared to believe that another health approach in the developing world was possible and did something to make it happen at an early stage.
In the first phase of our project, we want to specify the conditions under which these therapies are truly effective. To this purpose, we intend to use our day-to-day enthusiasm at the service of scientific excellence. We want to launch a series of cutting edge clinical studies that will establish the precise conditions of the scientific validity of metronomics and drug re-positioning techniques to cure cancer in the developing world. We will not compromise on scientific rigor, objectivity and prudence.
With this initiative and its website, we want to create a community of pioneers who embark in this forward-looking project as inventors, ambassadors and supporters. We welcome enlightened individuals whose heart is touched by the relevance and novelty of our ambition and who want to see the world transformation through our project. We welcome institutions that embace social innovation and look for a long-term association with the development of innovative therapeutic and business strategies to fight children cancer in the developing world.
