The European Palliative Care Research Centre (PRC) is the research unit in the Section for Palliative Care. PRC is a research consortium that coordinates and collaborates with groups and individual researchers in Norway and across Europe as well as with researchers in North America and Australia. The number of core collaborating centres is 25.

Research strategy. The aim of the PRC is to conduct high quality patient-centred research to assure that cancer patients receive optimal and evidence-based care alongside best tumour-directed treatment, throughout the entire disease trajectory. To achieve this, PRC conducts a variety of clinical studies combining different research methods using multi-professional research teams to gain new knowledge and engage in the aggregation and evaluation of existing knowledge to develop and update treatment guidelines for implementation into clinical practice. Examples are prospective intervention studies, assessment and classification, implementation research and translational research. PRC performs national and international research, education and public health care development in patient cohorts receiving curative, life-prolonging or symptom-relieving treatments. The main areas of focus within our palliative care studies are pain, cachexia and health care services research.

The clinical studies in the coming five-year period will focus on host-related factors in cancer patients. To improve clinical practice, existing and new research findings must be implemented, and the development and implementation of patient-centred care pathways to organize and optimize care is a highly prioritized area of PRC. This also includes implementation activities and education of health care providers.

Funding

The main sources of funding are the Norwegian Cancer Society and Oslo University Hospital.

PRC are currently running or involved in a number of different projects. A few of the most recent are listed below, for a complete list please consult the PRC website: PRC Projects - Oslo universitetssykehus (oslo-universitetssykehus.no) 

• The PALLiON study – (Palliative Care Integrated in Oncology), a national cluster randomized trial on early integration of oncological and palliative care (NCT 03088202) 
• Brain Metastases in Norway - A Prospective Cohort Study, a 2 year follow-up of patients with newly diagnosed brain metastases; clinical and treatment related patient self-reported data (NCT 03346655)
• PRAIS - The Palliative Radiotherapy and Inflammation Study, a large international observational study aiming to investigate predictors of response of radiotherapy in patients with painful bone metastases (NCT02107664)
• MENAC -  The Multimodal Exercise/Nutrition/Anti-inflammatory treatment for Cachexia trial, a large-scale international open randomized phase III multimodal intervention trial investigating the effect of a tripod intervention as early prevention of the development of cachexia (NCT 02330926).
• The Orkdal model, a national pre-post study investigating the collaboration between community and specialist care by establishing care pathways to improve palliative care to advanced cancer patients and families in 13 municipalities belonging to a local hospital (NCT02170168)