The search to discover and validate the first-ever clinical biomarker to diagnose and treat pancreatic cancer is at the foundation of a new, cross-sector collaboration. Berg, a biopharmaceutical company committed to uncovering health solutions through a data-driven, biological research approach; the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, and the Pancreatic Cancer Research Team (PCRT) managed by Cancer Research And Biostatistics (CRAB) announced today they will work together to eradicate the disease.
According to The National Cancer Institute, nearly 47,000 Americans were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2014, a disease from which only 6.7 percent will survive five years. "Pancreatic cancer will become the No. 2 cause of cancer death in the United States within five years, surpassing both breast and colon cancer," said James Moser, MD, director of the research team for BIDMC's new Pancreas and Liver Institute and an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
"Finding a new biomarker will bring real hope to patients with pancreatic cancer. Currently, 70 percent of people with even the smallest pancreatic tumors pass up potentially life-saving treatments. We believe that our new collaboration with Berg and the Pancreatic Cancer Research Team represents the dawn of the kind of precision medicine needed to beat this terrible disease."
Each organization brings enormous capabilities to the collaboration. BIDMC and its Cancer Center are home to one of the nation's flagship clinical and translational research programs for pancreatic cancer, providing well-coordinated, multidisciplinary, patient- and family-centered care for adults with cancerous and non-cancerous conditions that affect the liver, the biliary system, and the pancreas.
The PCRT, a group of leading researchers dedicated to the treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer, is a 48-site multinational network of cancer centers and expert scientists founded in 2003 to cure pancreatic cancer. It is chaired by Ramesh Ramanathan, MD, a faculty member at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
CRAB will provide guidance and infrastructure to coordinate the appropriate samples and relevant clinical data needed to discover and clinically validate the pancreatic cancer biomarkers, under the direction of John Crowley, PhD, CRAB founder, Board Chair and Chief of Strategic Alliances.
Berg, the namesake of Chairman and Co-founder, Carl E. Berg, together with Co-Founders, Mitch Gray, Managing Director and Niven R. Narain, President & CTO is a leading precision medicine company merging biology with Bayesian AI to fundamentally understand patient populations as a foundation to creating the next generation of drugs and diagnostics. Harnessing the power of technology to allow the patient biology to inform the direction of patient care will drive the future of healthcare. Carl Berg has a keen interest in helping those with pancreatic cancer and thought it profound to announce on World Health Day.
"This first of its kind collaboration is a step in offering hope to patients and families battling pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most deadly cancers affecting so many people," said Niven R. Narain, Co-Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer of Berg. "This partnership is taking a true precision medicine approach to understand and treat pancreatic cancer. We will employ Berg's Interrogative Biology™ Platform, which merges biology with technology to match the right patients to the right drugs based on the patient's responses, and most importantly, to be able to detect this silent disease earlier so that effective treatments can lead to longer survival."
Together, the BIDMC Cancer Center and PCRT will design clinical trials and provide both healthy and treated pancreatic tissue, bio-fluids, and treatment results from patients to Berg for analysis using Berg's Interrogative Biology™ platform, which can synthesize trillions of data points per sample.
Ramanathan and Crowley will introduce Berg's lead cancer drug, BPM 31510, for Phase II clinical trials for metastatic pancreatic cancer to more than 48 PCRT sites around the world. BPM 31510 is one of the first cancer drugs to be guided by artificial intelligence and works by reprogramming the metabolism of cancer cells, re-teaching them to undergo cell death.
The teams in this unique partnership will share their enormous talents to cure pancreatic cancer. "CRAB is dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer, and we have strengthened that commitment with the best team of physicians in the field with the PCRT", said Crowley. "Berg's unique technologies and the vast reach of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Team network will provide every opportunity to make a difference against this deadly cancer. Dr. Ramanathan joins me with the wholehearted support of the PCRT team in this exciting partnership with Berg."