Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network launches effort to generate new research: Focus on agents that improve cancer patients' immune systems.

摘要

Members of 27 research institutions from across the country, along with representatives from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the pharmaceutical industry, met in May for the launch meeting of the Cancer Immunother-apy Trials Network (CITN), a new NCI-funded initiative headquartered at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.Washington.The goal of the CITN is to coordinate a network of top immunologists who will conduct research on promising new agents that boost cancer patients' immune systems. "Our strategy is to focus on trials that are likely to provide the quickest route to proof of concept, demonstration of patient benefit, and regulatory approval," says principal investigator Martin A. Cheever, MD, a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's clinical research di-vision who directs the network.