- Network Aims to Advance Collaboration Across Industry and Academia to Accelerate Treatment Development for Patients
- Inaugural Scientific Summit Prioritized Advancing Translational Research, Pharmacodynamic Readouts and Innovative Biomarker-Driven Programs
Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) today announced the launch of Amgen Partners of Choice (APoC), a new network that brings together Amgen’s oncology research and development experts and world-class clinical leaders at eight research centers across the globe. The APoC member institutions are Asan Medical Center (Seoul, South Korea), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Mass.), Essen University Hospital (Essen, Germany), Institute Gustave Roussy (Paris, France), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, N.Y.), Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne, Australia), Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (Toronto, Canada) and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona, Spain). As part of Amgen’s mission to improve care through partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, the network fosters academic collaboration to advance new treatment options for patients with the greatest unmet needs.
“We have a big goal – to make profound differences in changing the standard of cancer care – and we are committed to doing that through collaboration,” said Jean-Charles Soria, MD, PhD, senior vice president, Research and Development at Amgen. “Through Amgen Partners of Choice, we hope to foster earlier, deeper, and more frequent academic collaboration to fuel quicker progress for patients facing complex, difficult-to-treat cancers.”
The network aims to create multiple collaboration channels globally with the goal of expediting the transition of new, transformational programs to leaders in the clinic. Current APoC projects are focused on select disease areas and tumor types including thoracic, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary cancers.
“Collaboration with national and international reference centers is essential to advance in cancer research and the creation of programs and new lines that lead to the development of more innovative and effective treatments for cancer patients. Therefore, thanks to this collaboration agreement, we hope to be able to join forces to promote this collaboration and achieve more effective and individualized treatments, especially in those cases in which patients do not respond to standard therapies,” says Dr. Josep Tabernero, director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and head of the Medical Oncology Service of the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.
The APoC network will convene bi-annual scientific summits where participants will discuss emerging oncology topics and advise on improving clinical trials to foster better outcomes for patients. In June, Amgen hosted the inaugural scientific summit at its headquarters, bringing together APoC members for the official launch of the new academic network. During the two-day event, Amgen leaders and APoC members discussed priority projects and key areas that the APoC network will focus on and how they intend to bring these transformational programs to patients. The next network-wide scientific summit will take place virtually later this year.
