Institute seminar April 20th Professor Péter Nagy – National Institute of Oncology, Hungary

The Hungarian National Institute of Oncology and the Molecular Immunology and Toxicology Research Programs

Miklós Kásler¹ and Péter Nagy²

¹Director General

²Departments of International Relations and Molecular Immunology and Toxicology 

The first part of the presentation will briefly introduce The National Institute of Oncology in Hungary (NIO): The center was founded in 1936 as the Eötvös Loránd Radium and X-ray Institute. It was expanded, moved to its current location in Budapest and designated as the National Institute of Oncology in 1952. This introduced a new era in NIO’s history, switching focus from radiological treatment to comprehensive oncology care.

            Beyond providing patient care for the Central-Hungarian region, as the national center in oncology, NIO provides services on national grounds, which include: 1) Developing and coordinating the Hungarian National Oncology Network. 2) Providing care for rare types of tumors (NIO has been solely designated by the Hungarian Ministry of Health to treat rare tumors). 3) Developing multidisciplinary professional standards and guidelines for tumor localization in collaboration with the relevant Advisory Boards. 4) Running the National Cancer Registry 5) Providing professional development trainings and courses for oncologists 6) Integrating translational research results into patient care in Hungary.

            Currently NIO operates with a staff of just above 1000 and annually treats approximately 16 000 new inpatients, and the number of our outpatient cases is close to 500 000.

            It has 7 dedicated research departments, and 14 clinical and diagnostic departments. Annually we produce more than 100 research publications with a cumulative impact factor over 600 as well as several academic and scientific and educational books and book chapters. There are currently over 100 running investigator initiated, EORTC, IBCSG or company sponsored clinical trials (phase I-III) at NIO.

            NIO holds the oncology chairs of Semmelweis University of Medicine, the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Targu Mures and partially that of Pécs University.

            NIO participates in several EU projects including the EurocanPlatform, the ERA-NET TRANSCAN and the BenchCan projects and has an ongoing collaboration with European organizations such as the OECI.

In the second part of the presentation I will demonstrate the basic research programs of the Molecular Immunology and Toxicology research group with focus on the widespread roles of redox regulation and sulfide signaling in tumor biology.