Cancer prevention

Prevention at Institut Curie

At Institut Curie, prevention is a key focus of the fight against cancer, deployed through the establishment of specific courses of care and research programs.
The institute develops a global vision for prevention, relying on the care-research continuum at the heart of its activities. It also combines human and social sciences, an essential pivot in the development of personalized prevention plans, to integrate human behavior into its approach. This approach is built in collaboration with its various partners (city medicine, patient associations, mutual insurance companies, institutional stakeholders, etc.).
Institut Curie's prevention policy is structured around three key stages - before cancer, during treatment, and during the monitoring phase. At each stage, the institute has set up programs (care as well as research) to prevent the onset or aggravation of the pathology and improve the patient's quality of life.

Prevent the risks of developing cancer

When considering all the risk factors, whether they are related to the environment and lifestyle or genetic:

• continue to raise public awareness about the impact of lifestyle and behaviors on cancer risks (40% of cancer cases could be prevented),
• promote vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer and other types of cancers,
• deploy a lung cancer screening strategy for people at risk,
• develop oncogenetics, already integrated at Institut Curie into the treatment of people at high risk of cancer in order to offer them adapted follow-up.

Prevent the side effects of the disease

Cancer treatments can cause side effects; therefore, it is essential to mitigate them and limit them as much as possible to preserve the quality of life of patients. These side effects are not only of a physiological nature. They also have an impact on everyday life. This is why Institut Curie is multiplying its initiatives to, in particular:

• understand the side effects and intercept the undesirable effects by offering personalized support care (therapeutic education, oncosexology, dietetics and nutrition, rehabilitation, etc.)
• reduce the after-effects of the disease by providing access to therapeutic innovations such as adaptive radiotherapy
• provide supportive care or return to work,
• develop research projects to limit clinical side effects and potential after-effects.

Prevent the risk of relapse

Institut Curie relies on the multidisciplinary expertise of its care and research teams to reduce the risk of cancer recurrence as much as possible and treat relapses as soon as possible. This expertise is implemented through several actions:

• offer a dedicated physical activity system adapted to cancer patients with the development of a personalized assessment and a nutritional program
• pursue research revolving around the understanding of relapses through international clinical trials that bring hope, such as the PADA-1 trial or the RHU CASSIOPEIA project
• better understand the mechanisms at the origin of relapses in order to avoid or predict them by continuing to develop basic research
• strengthen the monitoring pathways and support for patients at the Institute when they fear a recurrence of their cancer (psycho-oncology consultations, complementary approaches)