Programme components

A French multidisciplinary national research network dedicated to kidney cancer, functioning as both a clinical research platform and a prospective health data warehouse.

Certified by the French National Cancer Institute as a clinic-biological database.

UroCCR focuses on the therapeutic management and applied research in kidney cancer. It draws on the collaborative contributions of 58 centres across France, including public hospitals, private institutions, and cancer centres. The network’s health data warehouse allows for the continuous and secure collection of real-world data, encompassing demographic and clinical information, biological sample data, patient-reported experience and outcome measures (PREMs and PROMs), as well as experimental research findings.

With more than 10 million individual data points, UroCCR has become a cornerstone for epidemiological, observational, interventional, and translational research in both biological and technological fields. This extensive resource also facilitates the prospective evaluation of real-life clinical practices, forging a uniquely integrated model that bridges care and research.

To date, UroCCR has supported over 250 research projects, with around twenty studies actively running at any given time. These projects range from retrospective analyses using existing datasets to prospective interventional trials and translational research initiatives.

Its strategic importance is further recognised by its inclusion in the national list of databases and real-world evidence platforms eligible for use by the French National Authority for Health in evaluating medical products and healthcare technologies.

A linkage to the French National Health Data System (SNDS) via the UroCCR-Chain health data warehouse enables the expansion of the scope of collected information and the development of projects related to the medico-economic evaluation of health trajectories.

UroCCR’s aims cover the following areas:

• Promote research initiatives on kidney cancer by structuring national resources and capacities
• Create a multicentric collection of biological samples
• Generate prospective research projects of all categories and in different thematic fields
• Enable qualified data controllers to re-use network data (subject to formal requirements) for the purposes of research, assessment or knowledge improvement in the following domains:
  • Descriptive epidemiology of kidney cancer;
  • Pharmacoepidemiology and… of treatments: safety, efficacy, real-life treatment indications, and costs;
  • Quality of life and other PROMs and/or PREMs (which can be collected digitally and automatically using UroConnect), and the personal, family, professional and social consequences of kidney cancer;
  • Research into diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive biomarkers;
  • Identification of markers which predict disease progression;
  • Evaluation of care practices and treatment techniques (surgical, interventional and pharmacological);
  • Research linked to the French National Health Data System.