ATLANTA (Feb. 18, 2016) – The Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has been named one of the founding members of the Cancer MoonShot 2020 Pediatrics Consortium, bringing the promise of combined immunotherapy as the next-generation standard of cancer care to children diagnosed with cancer.
With leadership at Phoenix Children’s Hospital helping initiate this consortium, all founding partners will apply the most comprehensive cancer molecular diagnostic testing available, and leverage proven and promising combination immunotherapies and clinical trials through the Quantitative Integrative Lifelong Trial (QUILT) Program within the Cancer MoonShot 2020 mission. Real-time data sharing, enabled by the infrastructure provided by Cancer Moonshot 2020, will accelerate clinical learning and insight to all members participating in the consortium.
“We are honored to be included in this important collaboration to advance the standard of care for our pediatric cancer patients,” said Douglas K. Graham, MD, PhD, Director of the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine. “The Cancer MoonShot 2020 will give us genomic and proteomic tools to provide deeper insight into the biology of pediatric cancers. We are also particularly excited about the potential to engage the immune system in offering new hopes for curative therapy for patients with the highest risk cancers.”
Three major underlying drivers behind the formation of the consortiums are:
- There is increasing recognition that cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, caused by any one of a multiple number of genetic mutations, with hundreds and even thousands of molecular alterations presenting within each pediatric cancer patient; therefore demanding a more personalized, precision approach. This pediatrics consortium will lead and use next-generation precision clinical genomic-proteomics enabling doctors and patients to get the most comprehensive molecular diagnosis in the market today.
- While significant progress in cancer treatment has been made, there remains significant fragmentation across the healthcare ecosystem, with pharmaceutical drug development occurring in silos with limited ability to share clinical information efficiently, especially cutting-edge immunotherapy treatment options and patient outcomes to guide in treatment decisions. Consortium participants have recognized that the collaboration among pharma, oncology and others in the medical and scientific community, combined with leading whole genomic and proteomic sequencing analysis and the huge breadth of immunotherapy clinical trials provided through Cancer MoonShot 2020, is a much-needed means to reduce the barriers to accelerated progress in the war on pediatric cancer.
- Cancer MoonShot 2020 provides access to a national, robust and scaled cloud infrastructure enabling the ability to share data in real time and to provide rapid access to breakthrough knowledge to all. Academic institutions now have the capability to share complex panomic data tied to phenotypic medical records and clinical outcomes. Such a comprehensive system, combined with multiple pharma participation has not been available to any of the individual children cancer centers before on such a national basis and this infrastructure will accelerate clinical trial and drug development, establishing the National Pediatrics Cancer Learning System to accelerate the next generation of care for all.
Founding members in the consortium are:
- Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago Ill.
- Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children's, Atlanta, Ga.
- Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Orange, Calif.
- Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.
- Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Pittsburgh, Pa.
- Duke Department of Pediatrics–Duke University School of Medicine, Raleigh, N.C.
- Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center, Boston, Mass.
- Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah and Intermountain Primary, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Primary Children’s Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Phoenix, Ariz.
- Sanford Health, San Diego, Calif.