CanFaster is a joint venture among industry, health care and academia to enhance and accelerate innovations and clinical implementation within oncology. The vision of CanFaster is to prolong and save lives of cancer patients through integrated development and commercialization/implementation of diagnostic/treatment alternatives, thus reaching the market and patient more rapidly. CanFaster will save lives of cancer patients, not only for future generations, but already for today´s.
The CanFaster programme is enabled by an intimate collaboration between industry, health care system and academia. The collected efforts of all partners result in effective translational cancer research where entrepreneurial spirit, state-of-the-art medical care and world-class scientific excellence play the key role. In total 14 postdocs are hosted within CREATE Health, a cancer research programme at Lund University with 15 years of broad international collaboration experience as well as many successful spin-off companies reaching the market. The regional postdoctoral programme complements the original CanFaster doctoral programme where 16 ESRs were recruited and finished their thesis during the lasting of the postdoctoral programme. Tight collaboration between postdoctoral researchers and PhD students had positive synergy effect and led to innovative solutions in the cancer field as well as inspirational and vivid work environment.
The main objectives of the CanFaster programme are (i) increased international and intersectoral mobility, (ii) intensified collaboration within oncology between different sectors including academia, industry and health care, (iii) acceleration of innovation, attracting international investors leading to increased number of SMEs in the region and (iv) education of a new generation of excellent multidisciplinary, entrepreneurial scientists. This is achieved through the attraction of the MSCA program for industrial partners to add-on to the EU and public national funding of the programme with financial and in-kind contribution.
