Bank of Cyprus Oncology Centre (BOCOC)

The Bank of Cyprus Oncology Center (BOCOC) is a not-for-profit tertiary Cancer Centre, based in Nicosia, Cyprus. Founded in 1998, by the Bank of Cyprus and the Cyprus Government, BOCOC has been established as the principle provider of oncological services in the island, with over 47.000 patients treated at the Centre since its inception. BOCOC has evolved into an over 250 staff strong modern facility, exceeding 2000 patient contacts per year. The Centre provides state-of-the-art Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology and Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology services with over 20 highly qualified consultants. BOCOC is the first Hospital in Cyprus to be accredited by the British Accreditation/ Certification Agency, CHKS (Caspe Healthcare Knowledge Systems) on quality assurance and quality improvement for health care providers internationally, since 2007 and at the same time to be certified with the international quality standard ISO 9001. Patients are managed in the context of multi-disciplinary and site-specialised care, aiming to deliver high quality care according to standard international guidelines. Since its founding BOCOC has demonstrated significant clinical research activity. The Clinical Trials Unit, facilitates the conduct of clinical and translational studies through large European organisations including the European Organisation for Research and Treatment in Cancer (EORTC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) UK trials as well as the European Commission by Horizon funded projects. The research team currently comprises of principal and co- investigators, 2 very experienced research nurses who have been working on clinical trial research at the BOCOC for almost 25 years, a clinical trial co-ordinator who has extensive Molecular Biology background in pre-clinical research and has taken over the administrative coordination of the unit and a dedicated trial pharmacist who is responsible for receiving, storing and handling the IMPs provided by the Sponsors. The translational research projects that are funded by local funding bodies and/or EU (e.g. H2020 program) are currently handled by a Research nurse and 3 research officers with biology background.