The BENCHISTA study: the GRELL countries with their registries collaborate with the project.

The international project ‘Benchmarking of childhood cancer survival by stage’ (BENCHISTA) aims:

• to test the application of the international consensus “Toronto Staging Guidelines” (TG) [1] for paediatric tumours by European and non-European population based cancer registries (PBCRs) for six common paediatric solid tumours [2];

• to understand possible differences in survival among countries comparing stage at diagnosis and survival rates by stage ;

• to test the data availability and completeness of collection of several ‘Toronto’ non stage prognostic factors ( defined in the Toronto consensus) [3], treatment types given, occurrence of relapse/progression and cause of death.

The great majority of registries operating in the area of the GRELL contributed with about 4,600 records.

Belgium, France , Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, participate with a national contribution for childhood cancers. Instead, from Italy, Spain and Brazil with have the participation of most of the PBCRs but they do not covering the overall population. Other European countries together with Australia, Canada, and Japan are participating in the project.

The results of the project are of great importance for the GRELL area of Europe. The last published 5-year childhood cancer survival variability between countries are noticeable for the six tumours included in this

project [4] bringing great interest in the future results of the BENCHISTA project. The results of the project will be presented in Milan, the 19th and 20th of June. Heterogeneity in legal aspects and different interpretation of the GDPR by each participating country was encountered when developing the Data Transfer Agreement required by the majority of PBCRs. This process delayed the project management and the data flow.

The project was funded by Children with Cancer UK and Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) for the Italian part of the project.

More information in the website:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/research/developmental-biologyand-

cancer/benchista-project

Contact info: Benchista@istitutotumori.mi.it

References

1. Gupta S, Aitken JF, Bartels U, Brierley J, Dolendo M, Friedrich P et al. Paediatric cancer stage in population-based cancer registries: the Toronto consensus principles and guidelines. Lancet Oncol. 2016, Apr; 17(4):e163–72.

2. Laura Botta, Gemma Gatta, Fabio Didonè, Angela Lopez Cortes, Kathy Pritchard-Jones, the BENCHISTA Project Working Group International benchmarking of childhood cancer survival by stage at diagnosis: The BENCHISTA project protocol. PLoS ONE 17(11): e0276997.

3. Gupta S, Aitken J, Bartels U, Bhakta N, Bucurenci M, Brierley JD et al. Development of paediatric nonstage prognosticator guidelines for population-based cancer registries and updates to the 2014 Toronto Paediatric Cancer Stage Guidelines. Lancet Oncol. 2020 Sep; 21(9):e444–e451.

4. Laura Botta, Gemma Gatta, Riccardo Capocaccia, Charles Stiller, Adela Cañete, Luigino Dal Maso, Kaire Innos, Ana Mihor, Friederike Erdmann, Claudia Spix, Brigitte Lacour, Rafael Marcos-Gragera, Deirdre Murray, Silvia Rossi, on behalf of the EUROCARE-6 Working Group Long-term survival and

cure fraction estimates for childhood cancer in Europe (EUROCARE-6): results from a populationbased study .Lancet Oncol 2022 .Published Online November 15, 2022 https