A new journal... on spindle cells

Clinical Sarcoma Research was conceived by two "networks of excellence" focusing on soft tissue and bone sarcomas, namely CONTICANET and EUROBONET, which were initially funded by the European Commission within its 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. At the time this open-access journal was founded, towards the end of their EU-funded life span, these networks were considering merging and becoming one entity. Now, a new European Commission-funded initiative called EUROSARC will take off in 2012, thereby continuing and expanding the research activity generated within both CONTICANET and EUROBONET.CONTICANET and EUROBONET were originally intended to foster "excellence" in clinical and translational research, but they also inevitably focused on quality of care (e.g., by dealing with clinical practice guidelines, and so forth). Nothing, in fact, can be done in rare diseases by separating care and research.In rare cancers, even a single clinical case can teach a lot. Is it care or research? Occasionally, a single patient may lead translational scientists to conceive new ideas, by serendipity. And, vice versa, a single case can be sufficient to provide convincing proof of a strong translational hypothesis. In the recent past this paradigm allowed the sarcoma community to make big steps forward. It is intuitive that rare cancers can by no means be less complex than frequent ones. However, in rare cancers we cannot afford the same quality of evidence generated by big numbers. We would need dissemination tools to accommodate for this. Sometimes, medical decisions are made in rare cancers by generously sharing personal experience via e-mail within narrow, world-spanning medical circles. Why not make all this public? Sometimes, in rare cancer patients, new agents are used off-label or on a compassionate basis. Why not make these cases public, even when the outcome is negative? This would help limit the publication bias, which is the real biasing f