In 2015, the White House launched the Precision Medicine Initiative to individualize treatments for diseases based on one’s genes, environment, and lifestyle. In 2016, President Obama announced Cancer Moonshot, with the goals of making it easier for patients to join clinical trials and to improve collaboration among pharmaceutical companies developing similar drugs to treat similar cancers.
In what may be the largest collaborative clinical trial of its kind, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) has launched a groundbreaking multi-site, multi-treatment arm trial to develop highly targeted, effective treatment strategies for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).1,2
“Acute myeloid leukemia is one of the deadliest blood cancers,” said Louis J. DeGennaro, PhD, president and CEO of LLS. “It will kill 10,000 Americans this year and there have been no significant advances in the treatment for AML in more than 40 years.”
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This precision medicine approach, called the “Beat AML” Master Trial, is led by LLS and will include collaboration from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Foundation Medicine (a genomics provider), pharmaceutical companies such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, and Gilead, and renowned clinical sites that include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
“LLS’s Beat AML Master Trial was one of the Moonshot-inspired initiatives announced by Vice President Biden,” Dr DeGennaro noted. “Beat AML exemplifies perfectly the tenets of the Moonshot: fostering collaboration and sharing of vital data, advancing precision medicine, and most important, the urgency of getting new and better treatments to patients faster.”
