NEW YORK – Caris Life Sciences on Tuesday announced a collaboration with the Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium to advance precision oncology research in pediatric cancers.
The Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium is a group of more than 50 universities and children's hospitals, based at Penn State College of Medicine, that offers a network of pediatric cancer clinical trials and a program to provide genomic sequencing to patients. Under this collaboration, Caris will be the molecular analysis partner for Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium studies.
Caris will provide whole-exome and whole-transcriptome sequencing to the consortium members. One goal of the consortium is to provide all new or recurring pediatric cancer patients with complete genomic sequencing. These results will help match patients to precision treatments or biomarker-defined clinical trial opportunities. The company will also collaborate with the consortium on research to advance pediatric cancer care and improve outcomes.
"We believe that sequencing all patients' tumors, as well as following circulating tumor DNA in the blood and molecular tumor board review, will improve the depth and accuracy of our patient care," Giselle Saulnier Sholler, chair of the Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium and the division chief of pediatric hematology and oncology at Penn State Health Children's Hospital, said in a statement.
The Beat Childhood Cancer Research Consortium has opened more than 20 Phase I/II pediatric cancer trials. The group's focus is to research novel therapies for difficult to treat relapsed and refractory cancers and the implementation and use of precision medicine across the entire treatment journey.