Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Aims to Speed Up Cancer Research Trials by Adopting Streamlined Review Process

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 15, 2016 – The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and its six affiliated research institutions have agreed to streamline the review process for faster approval of multicenter clinical trials. This approach is designed to get clinical trials off the ground in weeks, rather than months, saving both time and resources.

The Parker Institute partners with six academic research centers: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Each has its own institutional review board (IRB). Federal regulations require these boards to review trials for patient safety, overall conduct and data integrity.

Under this new agreement, called an IRB reliance agreement, the six research centers will designate one institutional review board as the IRB of record for each trial. This eliminates the need to have multiple review boards approve the same trial separately, a common cause of significant delays in clinical research.

This effort is designed to accelerate the pace of clinical research so that potentially life-saving cancer immunotherapies can reach patients sooner, a main objective of the Parker Institute.

“This type of collaborative partnership is an important first step that we are taking to accelerate immunotherapy research,” said Ramy Ibrahim, M.D., vice president of clinical development at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. “By minimizing obstacles that scientists routinely face in clinical trials, we save time. And every day we save initiating a clinical trial brings us a day closer to delivering promising treatments to cancer patients.”

About the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy brings together the best scientists, clinicians, and industry partners to build a smarter and more coordinated cancer immunotherapy research effort.

The Parker Institute is an unprecedented collaboration between the country’s leading immunologists and cancer centers: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The Parker Institute was created through a $250 million grant from The Parker Foundation.

The Parker Institute’s goal is to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies capable of turning cancer into a curable disease by ensuring the coordination and collaboration of the field’s top researchers, and quickly turning their findings into patient treatments. The Parker Institute network brings together six centers, more than 40 industry and nonprofit partners, more than 63 labs and more than 300 of the nation’s top researchers focused on treating the deadliest cancers.

Contact Information:

Shirley Dang
Science Communications Manager
Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
sdang@parkerici.org
415-930-4385