CARY, NC (December 11, 2015) – The CEO Roundtable on Cancer  presented the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and Pfizer with the 2015 Dr. Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Awards in recognition of their innovative and collaborative work on Project Data Sphere, LLC, an independent not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium.

“Pfizer is honored to receive this esteemed award,” said Dr. Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs and chief medical officer for Pfizer Oncology.  “With initiatives like Project Data Sphere, I truly believe that we are at the threshold of an era of unprecedented collaboration that will help speed cancer drug discovery and development and bring new medicines to patients faster.” 

“Dr. Sanders and great organizations like the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and Pfizer embody the innovation and collaboration that is at the core of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer,” said Chris Viehbacher, chairman of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer. “They are not only leading, but leading by example.”

The Project Data Sphere data sharing platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) was launched in 2014 creating a novel library-laboratory for clinical trial research with the goal of advancing innovation in cancer research. In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of clinical trial data, Project Data Sphere, LLC teamed with CEO Roundtable on Cancer member SAS, a leader in data and health analytics, to make state-of-the-art analytic tools freely available to all researchers within the Project Data Sphere environment. 

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology received its award for demonstrating leadership that hastened the growth of the Project Data Sphere initiative by becoming the first National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) group to speedily provide data to the initiative. Pfizer was recognized for its integral role in establishing the Project Data Sphere initiative as a pioneering data provider and for its role in actively encouraging others to participate in this unique data sharing initiative. Previous winners include AstraZeneca and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2014, and Hogan Lovells, Sanofi and SAS Institute in 2013.

“As evolving research exposes the complexities of cancer cell biology, the need to be innovative in how we collaborate and share knowledge is ever more important,” said Dr. Charles A. Sanders, Chairman of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. “We salute two great organizations that have risen to this challenge and that are leading the way for others.”

“The Charlie” award was created in honor of Dr. Sanders, former chairman and CEO of Glaxo Inc., who previously served as the Chairman of Project HOPE and director general of Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sanders has been a driving force behind the innovation leading to improved drug development and has helped chart the course for health education and medical research in the United States and around the globe.

The Charlie Awards were presented at the annual meeting of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, held in Cary, NC, on December 3, 2015. During the meeting the organization’s Board of Directors also announced the election of Robert A. Bradway, CEO of Amgen, as incoming Chairman, succeeding Christopher A. Viehbacher who concluded four productive years as chairman during which Project Data Sphere, LLC was launched and an international subsidiary, CEO Roundtable on Cancer-China, was established in China.

About The CEO Roundtable on Cancer

The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was founded in 2001, when former President George H.W. Bush challenged a group of executives to “do something bold and venturesome about cancer within your own corporate families.” The CEOs responded by creating and encouraging the widespread adoption of the CEO Cancer Gold Standard™  which calls for organizations to evaluate their health benefits and workplace culture and take extensive, concrete actions in five key areas of health and wellness to fight cancer in the workplace.  The Life Sciences Consortium (LSC) was formed by the CEO Roundtable on Cancer as a means of bringing together leading oncology pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies to enable a transformation in research and development activities that will deliver more effective oncology therapies to patients faster by collaborating on solving issues common to all cancer companies engaged in drug discovery and development that cannot be solved by any single company alone.  An earlier outcome of the LSC was the creation of the “START Clauses” in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute. The creation of these “common language” contract templates aims to shorten the contract negotiation time prior to opening a clinical research trial. For more information, please visit www.CEORoundtableOnCancer.org.

About the Project Data Sphere® Initiative

Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent, not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), operates the Project Data Sphere® platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org). Launched in April 2014 PDS provides one place where the cancer community can broadly share, integrate, analyze and discuss historical patient-level comparator arm data sets (historical patient-level cancer phase III) from multiple providers, with the goal of advancing research. With its broad-access approach, the initiative brings diverse minds and technology together to help unleash the full potential of existing clinical trial data and speed innovation by generating collective insights that may lead to improved trial design, disease modeling and beyond. The platform currently contains 28,266 patient lives of data. In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of this data, PDS teamed with SAS Institute Inc. (SAS), a CEO Roundtable on Cancer Member. SAS, a leader in data and health analytics, developed and hosts the site and provides free state-of-the-art analytic tools to authorized users within the Project Data Sphere environment.

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For more information:
CEO Roundtable on Cancer
Deborah Dion
P: 919-531-0962
Deborah.Dion@CEORoundtableOnCancer.org