Swiss Cancer Institute (formerly SAKK)

The Swiss Cancer Institute is the non-profit organisation that runs independent, multicentre clinical cancer trials in Switzerland across all cancer types and specialties. It describes more than 60 years of work, and on 1 July 2025 it changed its name from SAKK (Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research) to Swiss Cancer Institute, with the same management and with existing contracts unchanged. Its members are all the Swiss university hospitals and leading hospitals, a network it says reaches about 80 per cent of cancer patients in the country, and it coordinates practically all the trials of international academic groups that run in Switzerland.

It is recognised by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) as a research institution of national importance and is funded under a performance agreement based on Article 15a of the Research and Innovation Promotion Act. The board is chaired by Viviane Hess, a medical oncologist at University Hospital Basel; the chief executive is Vincent Gruntz. Trials registered under its name include SAKK 16/00, which showed that adding radiotherapy to induction chemotherapy before surgery did not improve event-free survival in stage IIIA/N2 non-small-cell lung cancer, and the SAKK 75/08 oesophageal cancer trial.