Pain, depression and fatigue are subjective clinical manifestations of advanced cancer, affecting large patient groups. Even today, our understanding and management of these symptoms and conditions are insufficient. This project aims at improving the care by addressing diagnosis and classification as well as the underlying mechanisms. This will be done through research in several areas, in cooperation between clinicians, clinical researchers, and basic scientists.

The European Palliative Care Research Collaborative (EPCRC) consists of eight participating centres from six European countries: UK, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Norway. The overall objectives are to develop new genetic methods for predicting individual variation of fatigue/Cachexia and response to opioid treatment for pain, and methods for assessment and classification of pain, fatigue (cachexia), and depression. The collaborative´s proposal was successfully evaluated in 2006 and received EU funding for a three year period.