The activities reported in this foresight brief reflect the foresight knowledge in support of the Mission Board and its strategies towards a consolidated mission within the broader goal to fight cancer in the European Union. The support of the FOD Cancer project team consisted of several interactive events with the Mission Board, horizon scanning, and the provision of three specific reports. This synthesis report gives a concise overview of the deliverables, which are provided in full as annexes.

Based on the “Scoping Paper” (Annex I) this synthesis report demonstrates the challenges for future cancer research. It summarises some major aspects behind the urgency of the cancer topic – not only medical aspects but a broader spectrum that includes prevention, prediction, care, diagnosis and treatment as well as other economic and social aspects. The report is the result of a targeted literature review of recent documents where the future of the fight against cancer is discussed. The main goal of the review was to identify and assess both consolidated trends and drivers, and other phenomena at the periphery that are likely to have impacts on the future of cancer. Mission Board members revised the report and gave additional inputs online (since an onsite scoping meeting had to be sacrificed to meet the COVID-19 containment measures).

Building on the outcome of the revised Scoping Paper, two scenarios were developed discussing diverging directions of cancer development and the measures to fight cancer (Annex II). The two future health scenarios were based on scenarios from an earlier EU-funded project entitled "FRESHER - FoResight and Modelling for European HEalth Policy and Regulation", which aimed to identify future research policies to effectively address the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) using emerging health scenarios with a time horizon up to 2050. 

Within the online scenario workshop with members from the Mission Board on ‘Fighting Cancer’ and members from the European Commission, the two FRESHER scenarios were discussed, revised and feedback for desirable futures with regard to fighting cancer was collected. The two scenarios are briefly presented in this report as well. Under the impression of the two scenarios, the Mission Board members and EC representatives were guided by the FOD Cancer team to discuss online in five focus groups - in parallel - different stakeholder perspectives with regard to desirable milestones that may be achieved in the future to make prevention, diagnosis, treatment and survival of cancer more effective. These stakeholder perspectives comprised “Members of the European Parliament against Cancer”, “General Practitioners”, “Pharmaceutical Companies”, “Patient Organisations”, and “Survivors”. Out of these discussions, the FOD team developed three roadmaps (Annex III): milestones for prevention, milestones for diagnosis and treatment, and milestones for survivorship. The roadmaps are also briefly summarised.

The European Union introduced missions as a new instrument in Horizon Europe. Mission Boards were appointed to elaborate visions for the future in five Areas: Adaptation to Climate Change, Including Societal Transformation; Cancer; Healthy Oceans, Seas, and Coastal and Inland Waters; Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities; Soil Health and Food. Starting in autumn 2019, five Foresight on Demand projects supported them with foresight expertise and methodology. This project provides the work in support of the Mission Board on Cancer. In interaction with the Mission Board members and responsible Commission services, the project team scanned trends and drivers for cancer, developed two future health scenarios targeted at fighting cancer and roadmaps of events and milestones in the future of fighting cancer.