This article is about a phase III RCT that the hospital managed to do without major industry capital injection. This truly was a major achievement (I have been involved in a phase III RCT myself). It was published in the New England recently: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2402604
This trial is using an existing drug in a potentially novel way (before surgery as opposed to after surgery). I dont think it really lives up the original article title.
Argh, I'm so sorry, I linked to the wrong New England paper in my post above. (That is a different major achievement from the same institution, but the above was industry funded as others correctly pointed out).
The correct New England paper about this treatment is here:
This one is TIL therapy, where you basically take tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte from the patient, stimulate them ex vivo, and put them back.
The reason this is so impressive -- and highlighted by this article -- is that large phase III trials like this have now become so complicated due to various technical, financial, logistic, ethical, and above all regulatory challenges, that they are now mostly done by companies, or at least as joint ventures with companies (and often in jurisdictions with less of these issues, certainly not in the EU like this one). It is very, very impressive to pull off something like this as an academic institution (at least in Europe). What's more, the funding came from KWF (the Dutch cancer foundation), which is actually a public charity that mainly relies on donations.
