ELIMINATE CANCER INITIATIVEThe Eliminate Cancer Initiative is designed to encourage and reward collaboration in order to accelerate and promote cancer research breakthroughs and improve cancer prevention, detection and treatment. We also believe that patients want action and have a right to volunteer their personal data to aid cancer research projects and eliminate suffering in future generations.

It’s a convener, enabler, driver of policy change, and fundraising vehicle at the service of the patient and the cancer research community, supporting collaborations that break down siloes and encourage better outcomes for cancer patients.

OUR ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO MAKE CANCER NON-FATAL FOR THE NEXT GENERATION.

Cancer waits for no one. ECI believes that we must link patients and oncologists across the world through a well-connected global clinical trials network; we must accelerate the push to utilise next generation adaptive trials to speed up cancer therapies and cures; we must encourage precision medicine as the new standard of care, and we must establish a centralised databank that houses discovery, clinical, molecular and volunteer data to revolutionise cancer research and patient care on a global scale.

We are working towards empowering research teams to contribute to larger global trials and data sharing projects, while also helping them to draw down on these powerful databases and extract insights and analytics to accelerate their specialist areas of research.

Our mission is underway. ECI’s key projects are mapping a way forward through the ECI Clinical Trials Network, the GBM AGILE adaptive clinical trial as part of our Global Brain Cancer Mission, our scoping work on the Universal Cancer Databank as well as Centres of Excellence for molecular profiling.

ECI IS NOT A CANCER CENTER.

The Minderoo Foundation was established by philanthropists Andrew and Nicola Forrest in 2001 based on the mandate to give a hand up, not a hand out. The Foundation has supported over 250 initiatives globally including projects in education, research, Indigenous affairs, disaster response and the arts. In May 2017, Andrew and Nicola announced one of Australia’s largest private philanthropic donations of AU$400 million to substantially enlarge and refocus the efforts of the Minderoo Foundation. $75million was allocated as seed capital to establish the Eliminate Cancer Initiative (ECI). This unprecedented commitment reflects their membership of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet’s Giving Pledge.

Global Brain Cancer Mission. For many, brain cancer is a death sentence. ECI is working globally to rapidly increase survival rates for brain cancer sufferers by accelerating drug discovery and access to new therapies. To do this, ECI has embarked on a global movement to have Governments address the shortfall in focus and funding around brain cancer. Under ECI’s guidance The Australian Brain Cancer Mission, a $100m fund designed to reward and support those working in the field, was launched in 2017. Brain Cancer Missions are now being discussed across the globe, using Australia as the benchmark, with a goal to activate missions in the United States, Europe and China.

The response from Government and industry has been significant, with efforts to bring together leading brain cancer centres well underway. Examples of this collaboration are the successful UK Brain Cancer Roundtable recently convened in London targeting a £100 million fundraising goal, with plans well advanced for roundtables to be scheduled in the United States and China in 2018.

Cancer has no borders. At ECI, we are action focused and committed to supporting ambitious and scalable ideas, drawing on a team of seasoned international health, policy and commercial experts. We are global conveners of collaboration, devoted to leveraging cross-sector knowledge, technology, and capital from around the world.

We are committed to providing the relevant infrastructure and support for complex collaborative projects that could transform cancer treatment and prevention. Principally, we are focused on projects where barriers to data sharing and thorny jurisdictional issues have prevented patients from accessing life-saving therapies and put the brakes on cancer research and innovation.

We are committed to cancer prevention. With tobacco killing seven million people each year, ECI is focusing its immediate efforts on reducing the tobacco epidemic through a concentrated push in policy and advocacy.1 Our first project to “Stop Smoking before it Starts” is a worldwide campaign to raise the age of tobacco purchase from 18 years to 21 years, a dangerous period where 95% of all smokers commence their life-long addiction.2 Tobacco companies continue to target our youth, with ECI calling for further regulation to prohibit the adoption of e-cigarettes and use of product additives to stop early nicotine addiction.

Photo Credit: Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research

ECI UNIVERSAL CANCER DATABANKThe Universal Cancer Databank (UCD) will offer a secure centralised repository for researchers, clinicians and patients to share data, analytics and insights that will accelerate discoveries of therapies and cures.

This early-phase project offers researchers a critical piece of infrastructure to help power GBM AGILE and future adaptive clinical trials, as well as motivate strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechs to increase investment in drug development for rare cancers. It will also serve as a tool to empower the patient to make a meaningful contribution to science.

The UCD is planned to provide automated data ingestion agents and NLP (natural language processing) annotation pipelines to streamline clinical data annotation from each GBM AGILE site. The UCD will implement a contracting framework, enforced and monitored with administrative and operating controls, to ensure that participants and ECI industry partners will comply with the authorised intended use of patient data. Additionally, the UCD will serve as the neutral trusted third party to navigate country/jurisdiction-specific regulations to broker not only the uses of data, but access to a diverse range of analytics. This combination of ease of data fluidity and trust of data governance is needed to lower the technical barriers and cultural resistance to data sharing in drug trials.

The UCD will be 100% philanthropically funded and ECI is developing this important collaborative infrastructure on a multi-country basis, using a combination of technology, philanthropy and government to break down the barriers to data sharing between the top cancer institutes and research facilities around the world, and support the patient’s desire to volunteer their personal data.

UNIVERSAL PATIENT CONSENT FORMCancer patients in 2018 are increasingly savvy. They want access to the world’s best treatments, and are prepared to take risks with new drugs if their cancer doesn’t respond to normal therapies. They want to know that their patient data is linking them to the latest knowledge about how to beat cancer, helping to push cancer research forward, and contributing to cures for the next generation. Patients want action.

The major roadblock to giving patients what they want, and to accelerate discovery and innovation, is access to personal health information. With the rapid advances in data collection on a global basis, and ability to automate health care diagnostics and discovery using a combination of machine learning and human innovation, the policy and legislative framework must be laid now to support a patient-centred and controlled health care eco-system. ECI is working with multiple stakeholders internationally to achieve this through the integration of a Universal Patient Consent Form to share data in variety of health care settings.

REVOLUTIONISING DATA SHARING

CLINICAL TRIALS PATIENT MATCHINGECI is working to create the world’s first fully-connected global clinical research network to not only accelerate the evaluation of new anti-cancer drugs, but also drive research and learning from each patient to speed up discovery of new therapies. In Australia, ECI is set to launch the first country–wide collaborative trials platform with three major cancer centres on board – Linear Clinical Research, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer & Wellness Research Centre, and Chris O’Brien Lifehouse. The ECI Trials Network is in the process of adding two additional sites internationally. Under this system any patient referred to the network can be matched with any ECI trial. This will serve as a model to connect patients with a broader set of clinical trials available worldwide.

GBM AGILE - NEXT GENERATION CLINICAL TRIALECI is supporting the launch of an innovative, clinical trials project, GBM Adaptive Global Innovative Learning Environment (GBM AGILE), a revolutionary new approach to testing and developing cancer drugs. This first of its kind international trial is focused on finding a cure for the rare but aggressive brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), but also serves as a test case for deploying next generation adaptive trials technology across a range of deadly cancers. It holds the potential to crunch the timeframes involved in developing new cures for all cancers, and deliver transformative therapies and benefits for patients across the globe.

ECI is working with the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research (GCAR), which manages the GBM AGILE project, to start opening the GBM AGILE program to patients in the United States and Australia in 2018. So far, ECI has helped raise $10 million within Australia to fund the roll out of the GBM AGILE program there, as part of a larger $100 million which ECI has helped to raise for brain cancer in Australia. ECI is also pushing to secure the full package of launch funding with other donor groups in the USA, China and the United Kingdom. We are helping GCAR to engage with pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners to develop therapies through the GBM AGILE platform. With help from ECI, a parallel strategic goal is to broaden the path for regulatory approvals through international agencies including China’s Federal Drug Agency, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, and Europe’s European Medical Association.

OUR PROJECTS

MOLECULAR PROFILING To harness the full potential of GBM AGILE to advance knowledge and processes, we need to go beyond the current system of routine clinical trials using minimal molecular data to a system where we automatically integrate data from a range of sources to enhance research.

To support the GBM AGILE project, ECI and its partners and benefactors will fund one or more Centers of Excellence in each country to conduct longitudinal multi-omic and immune profiling on all GBM AGILE patients. By linking rich research data with clinical care data, the GBM AGILE community and future adaptive trial programs will be able to learn patient-by-patient why a novel therapeutic approach works or, equally importantly, why it doesn’t. This will revolutionize the quality of cancer research and patient care.

TOBACCO CONTROLTobacco continues to be the single largest contributor to cancer deaths globally, with more that 7 million people each year dying as a result of tobacco products.3 ECI will continue to promote medically and scientifically proven tobacco control policies to protect our children and reduce the number of young adults trapped in addiction. ECI is working to promote increasing the minimum age of purchasing tobacco products to 21 years, supported by compelling economic and scientific evidence that shows this simple legislative change will deliver long lasting and lifesaving benefits to those jurisdictions that implement it.

ECI also opposes to the use of e-cigarettes while there remains insufficient evidence to show they are a useful cessation device. Rather, many studies indicate e-cigarettes are a potent gateway for young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction. In addition, ECI will work with leading anti-tobacco advocates to continue to promote further tobacco prevention policies, including economic mechanisms such as increases in taxes and excises, prohibition of tobacco promotion and advertising, smoke free zones, and a range of product regulations to reduce harm from cigarettes.

1 See, World Health Organization, Tobacco Fact Sheet <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/>.

2 See, eg, Institute of Medicine, Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products (The National Academies Press, 2015) 43 <https://www.nap.edu/read/18997/chapter/4#43>; Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, “Increasing the Minimum Legal Sale Age for Tobacco Products to 21,” 2017, p. 1 <https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/assets/factsheets/0376.pdf>

3 See, World Health Organization, Tobacco Fact Sheet <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/>

END NOTES

1 in 6 deaths worldwide

from cancer

8.8m lives lost last year

up to 50% of cancers are preventable

To not act in the global patient’s interest is to act selfishly. We must unite to overcome this most intractable

of all medical challenges and resign to history the fatal and tragic legacy of cancer.

Andrew Forrest, Chairman Minderoo Foundation

eliminatecancer.org

an initiative of