Boston Medical Center (BMC), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have formalized a reciprocal agreement for joint clinical trials in cancer care. The agreement provides greater patient access to cancer clinical trials and increases research collaborations between the organizations.
With this new agreement, clinical trials may be led by principal investigators at Dana-Farber, MGH or BMC and will be open to patients at the hospitals.
Several trials, generally for patients with advanced cancer, have been opened with a number of patients participating.
"This clinical trial collaboration between Boston Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital will facilitate the development of new cancer therapies across these outstanding academic medical centers," said Matthew Kulke, MD, the Chief of Hematology/Oncology at BMC and Co-Director of the Boston University-BMC Cancer Center. "Importantly, the collaboration also helps cancer patients, who will be able to access a broad range of new, innovative cancer treatments in any of the three facilities."
"Enrolling patients into clinical trials helps them get the latest treatments, and helps researchers develop new therapies faster," said Eric P. Winer, MD, Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at Dana-Farber. "This important collaboration with Boston Medical Center and Mass General will provide great benefits to cancer patients in our region and will help the institutions to pursue their shared mission of providing access and advancing our understanding for how to treat and prevent cancer."
"We are delighted to collaborate with Boston Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to provide all patients with cancer throughout Greater Boston access to the most promising novel treatments for cancer," said Beverly Moy, MD, MPH, Mass General's Director of Cancer Equity and Clinical Director of Breast Oncology. "This collaboration will lead to important developments of new evidence and therapies in this era of genomic and precision medicine in cancer care."
This initiative reflects a systematic approach between top-ranked institutions to create an opportunity for the researchers and faculty to learn from one another, combine efforts in developing new and innovative studies, and to expand the enrollment of trials to reach a larger, more diverse population of cancer patients.
The institutions will collaborate to identify those trials that are appropriate to open together, as well as opportunities to jointly develop new studies.
