Northwell Health announced a collaboration with Indivumed to speed the advance of precision cancer research.
Northwell Health diagnoses and treats 19,000 new cancer patients each year. Indivumed, GmbH is a Germany-based oncology research company working to individualize anti-cancer medical therapies. Together they will greatly expand cancer biobanking activities within Northwell Health that will be used to help develop anti-tumor drugs and personalized medicine approaches.
This collaboration will provide key infrastructure for cancer research within Northwell Health, and will substantially enhance Northwell Health’s recent affiliation with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Investigators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have shaped contemporary biomedical research in many areas, including cancer.
“Attaining individualized cancer diagnosis and treatment for every patient based on reliable clinical data and molecularly intact biospecimens is our goal,” said Hartmut Juhl, managing director, founder and chief executive officer of Indivumed, and a cancer researcher. “Our tool for achieving this goal is the establishment of a unique global cancer database using molecular information from tissues collected under stringent protocols. Northwell Health brings a special blend of a strong clinical trial program within the largest hospital network in New York State. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a clear research leader in this field. By building this new biobank together, we can make a dramatic difference in genetic-based precision medicine.”
Under an initial three-year agreement, Northwell Health will collect lung, breast, colorectal, pancreatic and other cancer tissues for research and storage. Initially, tissue will be collected at three Northwell Health hospitals – North Shore University Hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Lenox Hill Hospital – with other hospitals joining the programme later.
Northwell Health cancer patients will have the opportunity to consent to having extra cancer tissue that was removed in the normal course of their treatment included in the biobank for research.
“This agreement is important on several fronts,” said James Crawford, managing director, PhD, executive director and senior vice president of laboratory services at Northwell Health and chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. “Creating a system-wide approach to biobanking of human cancer tissues expands our ability to conduct metabolic, as well as gene-based, cancer treatment research. It will also facilitate patients being able to participate in and potentially benefit from cutting-edge clinical research without disrupting their routine treatment.” Crawford went on to say “Indivumed is a world leader in tissue collection and preservation and will drive meaningful innovation within our health system. By participating in the Indivumed global network, we’ll be helping to build a critical mass of biological samples and clinical data for use in unique research and clinical trials for our community.”
"The Northwell Health collaboration with Indivumed will provide strong support for the close partnership between Northwell Health and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which was memorialized in 2015,” said David Tuveson, managing director, PhD, director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center. “It is an exciting step forward in bringing genomic cancer therapies out of the lab setting and into the field for use in treating patients.”
Peter K. Gregersen, managing director, head of the Robert S. Boas Center for Genomics and Human Genetics at Northwell’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, said the agreement builds on Northwell Health’s established biobank, which has been providing researchers and doctors a reliable way to collect and preserve tissue for the last decade. “This expanded ability to obtain human tissue for translational research will promote a better understanding of the interaction between cell biology and response to therapy, which is an essential ingredient to developing targeted cancer therapies,” he said.