Published on October 30, 2013 in Research
As our boldest strategic research initiative to-date, the Defeat GBM Research Collaborative aims to double the five-year survival rate of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients in just five years. We built around a funding and research model that is designed to rapidly move glioblastoma research progress through four synergistic and simultaneous projects that span the drug development pipeline from basic discovery science, through to translational research and pre-clinical drug development, all the way to clinical trial design.
In late August, we joined with strategic advisors Dr. Anna Barker, Dr. Webster Cavenee, and Dr. W.K. Alfred Yung, and hosted the rest of Defeat GBM’s research team, partners, as well as other potential collaborators from leading research institutions across the globe, in a scientific meeting that solidified the timelines, goals, designs, aims and integration of the four (4) individual projects that exist within the overall effort.
Meeting attendees included:
Dr. Yung, who serves as the Defeat GBM Scientific Director, summed-up the aims of the four projects, as:
From there the group of U.S.-based advisors and research teams deliberated and plotted the course forward for the four (4) simultaneous projects in target discovery, drug development, predictive biomarkers, and systems biology, as well as how all four projects teams would share and transfer ideas and data to help inform all of the various projects as they moved along:
Defeat GBM Project Overview
Discovery
Drug Development
Predictive Markers (biomarkers)
Systems Biology
Discussion then shifted, after introductions by Dr. Cavenee, to the international researchers and executives in the room who had come to explore ways to incorporate their own efforts into the Defeat GBM Initiative, as well as other opportunities for future collaboration. Dr. Otmar Wiestler of the University of Heidelberg and German Cancer Research Center, Dr. Wenbin Li of the Beijing Shijitan Hospital in China, and Catherine Stace the CEO of Australia’s Cure for Life Foundation all discussed GBM-specific efforts happening in their respective countries. After the demonstration of these projects, which showed great collaborative work being done in the international area, the entire group agreed to continue discussion about the Defeat GBM platform’s potential for international expansion.
The meeting concluded with closing remarks from National Brain Tumor Society CEO, N. Paul TonThat, who invited all parties to attend the National Brain Tumor Society’s Annual Meeting & Summit in early October as the next ‘check point’ in the future of Defeat GBM.
TAGGED WITH: brain cancer, brain tumor, GBM, glioblastoma, glioblastoma multiforme, systems biology