Ewing sarcoma is the third most common primary malignant bone-associated sarcoma. It occurs most frequently in children, adolescents and young adults, but is also seen in other age groups. The median age at diagnosis is 15 years. Ewing Sarcoma is predominantly seen in Caucasians and is very uncommon in the African and Asian population.Treatment of this rare cancer should be performed in specialised sarcoma centres. With modern multimodal regimens, consisting of local surgery and/or radiotherapy plus intensive systemic chemotherapy, survival can be achieved in ~70 % of patients with localised disease. It is of concern that the improvement in survival has slowed down in the last decades and that there is still a group of high-risk patients with a very critical prognosis.
We need biology-driven treatment options and we need to learn more about tumour- or host-associated factors that determine the response to the therapeutic agents provided. PROVABES is a European network of leading experts in Ewing sarcoma treatment and Ewing sarcoma research dedicated to work on clinically relevant biomarkers in Ewing sarcoma. This will enable the group to delineate treatment options in individual subsets and to provide a more personalised therapeutic approach.
