The German Advisory Council for facilitating construction and work of the Federal Research and Clinical Centre for Paediatric Haematology, Oncology and Immunology (FRC-PHOI) in Moscow was set up by public figures, doctors and professors from specialised paediatric oncology centres in September of 2005, when Mikhail Zurabov, then Minister of Public Health and Social Development, and Klaus Schröder, State Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Security, signed a memorandum on cooperation in the project and managing the centre's work.
The centre will boast innovative technological equipment to be used for diagnostics, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, as well as for interventional surgery, nuclear therapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for children suffering hematologic, oncologic and immune system diseases.
The centre will also have stem cell, blood and blood donor banks, as well as A, B and C-class research laboratories to work with gene vectors and nanomaterials. Also planned for the centre are an outpatient clinic, a one-day hospital, a convalescence department, a facility for training specialists in Russia and a recreation and retreat centre for children and their parents with accommodation for 150 families.
Within the project, Germany and Russia have created an exchange programme for medical professionals working on children's cancer. In 2007 and 2008, German Society of Paediatric Oncology and Haematology initiated three meetings in Munich, Berlin and Moscow, which resulted in launching cooperation groups to treat haematopoietic tumours, such as leukaemia and malignant lymphoma, and solid tumours such as brain tumours, soft tissue tumours and exostosis.
Starting from 2007 and 2008, the cooperation groups began working in the cities of Yekaterinburg and Perm to treat leukaemia of infants and cellular tumours respectively. At the same time a cancer patients register was created for the Moscow Region with the use of standardised registers provided by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, Lyon France).
The project of the centre, which is planned for opening on June 1, 2011, requires staff training and developing new technologies of cancer treatment, with joint efforts by German and Russian specialists to be coordinated and managed by the German Advisory Council. Among the council's key tasks are advanced training of medical and nursing staff, and medical technicians, educating and training supervising medical technicians and physics specialists, as well as standardisation and control over the centre's up-to-date technical equipment, and introduction of new methods of administration and management.