Driving Childhood Cancer Treatments Forward: Announcing a New Partnership with FasterCures & Children’s Tumor Foundation

Today, we announce a new partnership with FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, and the Children’s Tumor Foundation to identify deprioritized drugs that could benefit pediatric patients, and to create a new pediatric-focused pathway for development.   

As an organization committed to accelerating the development of new childhood cancer treatments, we know that smarter research funding is just one part of the solution; long-term success will require a seismic shift to the drug development process and landscape. This change will require strategic collaboration and outside the box thinking. With your support, we’re leading the way. 

“Drugs can be deprioritized by biopharmaceutical companies for a variety of strategic or commercial reasons and that can lead to missed opportunities for children with cancer,” said Kay Koehler, President & CEO of CureSearch. “This initiative will enable us to identify those opportunities and match them with development expertise and financial support to ensure that promising therapies are expedited to the children who are counting on us.” 

The partnership will utilize CureSearch’s relationships with key pediatric advocates within the pharmaceutical industry, including our Industry Advisory Council, to identify previously discontinued drugs as well as those that are likely to be deprioritized soon. These programs have already met certain milestones and are further along the drug development pipeline. 

“Leveraging our strong relationships with pediatric advocates within industry and our ability to convene the right players, we’ll work collaboratively with companies as they start to phase out adult drug programs and shift that momentum into pediatric development,” added Kelli Wright, National Director, Strategic Initiatives at CureSearch.  

This partnership is the first under FasterCures’ BRIDGE initiative launched in 2019 with a mission to enable more dynamic marketplaces for biomedical innovation.  

The organizations will be advised on a voluntary basis by leaders in the pediatric space, including:   

• D. Wade Clapp, M.D., Richard L. Schreiner Professor and Chairman, Department of Pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief for Riley Hospital for Children 
• Elizabeth Fox, M.D., Senior Vice President, Clinical Trials Research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 
• Kevin Grimes, M.D., Co-director of the SPARK Translational Research Program and Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine 
• Chris Lee, Managing Director, Strategic Growth at Palladium and member of CureSearch Strategic Oversight Committee 
• Freda Lewis-Hall, M.D., Board Member of FasterCures and former Chief Patient Officer and Chief Medical Officer at Pfizer 
• Baiju Shah, Senior Advisor to FasterCures and former CEO of BioMotiv  
• Kathy Wanner, Board Member of CureSearch and a Partner at Fairway Capital Management 
• Brigitte Widemann, M.D., Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute.  

Pharmaceutical representatives can contact Kelli Wright, National Director of Strategic Initiatives, for more information: kelli.wright@curesearch.org or (240) 235-2217. 

Read more about this exciting new partnership here. 

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