December 23, 2020:

In a recent holiday post on his blog Holden the Line on Cancer, George Weiner, MD, director of the University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, reflects on the resilience, creativity, and enduring commitment that has kept research collaborations strong throughout this tumultuous year. As one example, Dr. Weiner writes about the newly introduced Big Ten CRC Grand Rounds:

“One of the primary goals of an academic cancer center is to train the next generation of cancer clinicians and researchers. Our approach to such education has been changed, but not halted, by the pandemic. I continue to have weekly meetings with my research group by Zoom. In fact, my clinical research colleagues are more likely to participate virtually in these meetings now since they can do so from their offices or clinic and don’t have to walk to the other side of the medical center. I continue to meet weekly with graduate students in my laboratory. This has worked fairly well. It has become a standing joke that just about every Zoom meeting starts with a graduate student asking me to ‘enable screen sharing’ so we can review their data and plans together. Grand rounds and other conferences including tumor board discussions are held virtually as well. Not ideal but it works. As we all have gotten used to virtual conferences, we realized such meetings don’t need to be limited to a single institution. Holden suggested and organized the first Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium Grand Rounds that is a virtual meeting now held monthly. Typical attendance over the past few months has included around 100 researchers from multiple institutions. New collaborations between cancer centers in the Big Ten are starting to emerge from these discussions. Hopefully Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium Grand Rounds will continue post-pandemic and be seen as a silver lining that emerged from this very difficult time.” Read More

December 15, 2020:

After more than 20 years in cancer research, Borys Hrinczenko, MD, PhD, sees a bright future. As a lung cancer specialist at the Michigan State University Breslin Cancer Center, he has led numerous clinical trials and helped pioneer new therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors, harnessing the body’s immune system against lung cancer. Twenty years ago, he could offer his lung cancer patients few viable treatments.

More recently, “I’ve had patients who have done quite well” on checkpoint inhibitors, Hrinczenko said. That includes a small group of long-term survivors with advanced lung cancer.

He expects more breakthroughs as the Breslin Cancer Center looks forward to moving into a new hospital in early 2022 now being built by McLaren Health Care in partnership with MSU and adjacent to the East Lansing campus. Breslin is reorganizing its clinical trials office to improve efficiency and forming alliances with several other cancer groups, including the Karmanos Cancer Institute, which is part of McLaren.

MSU’s membership in the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC) is a key to that bright future. Hrinczenko is a member of the Consortium’s Steering Committee and its Thoracic Clinical Trial Working Group. He is an associate professor in the MSU College of Human Medicine and director of the Hematology and Oncology Fellowship Program. Read More

November 16, 2020:

In this month’s Across the Consortium, the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium highlights several new research studies, study publications, grant awards, professional appointments, and an endowment established to support cancer research. Learn what’s happening across the Big Ten CRC. Read More

November 3, 2020:

This month, the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium highlights the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center as our featured member. Rogel Cancer Center member Ajjai Alva, MBBS, is an associate professor of hematology/oncology and member of the Big Ten CRC’s Genitourinary Clinical Trial Working Group. He has participated in four Big Ten CRC trials with a few more in the pipeline. Dr. Alva shares why he is glad to be part of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium.

“Cancer Research is evolving rapidly with major new advances and that’s great news for patients. From a researcher perspective, the fast-changing landscape makes it critical to get new trials up and running fast and to get them completed fast as well. Otherwise, we run a real risk of the study being outdated and irrelevant. The consortium provides a great platform of outstanding experienced institutions and investigators to do cutting-edge and fast-paced studies. The Administrative Headquarters team is outstanding, highly professional, and very responsive to site and investigator needs and ever ready to assist. Read More

October 23, 2020:

In this month’s Across the Consortium, the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC) highlights a variety of activities and accomplishments across Big Ten universities. Highlights include new leadership announcements, grant awards, study publications, and novel treatments to continue the fight against cancer. Read More

October 1, 2020: Excerpt reposted with permission from the Erie Times-News.

The Big Ten is best known for football.

But in 2013, member universities teamed to collaborate rather than compete, in cancer research.

The Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium, based at the Hoosier Cancer Research Network in Indianapolis, Ind., helps researchers at 15 universities work together to fight cancer. The consortium includes the Penn State Cancer Institute, Rutgers University Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“The idea was to get all those football colleges and cancer institutes together to build a forum so that people from member institutions can conduct collaborative research and clinical trials,” said Monika Joshi, MD, who represents the Penn State Cancer Institute, located in Hershey, on the Big Ten CRC steering committee. Read More

October 9, 2020:

A Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium phase II study for adult patients with advanced salivary gland carcinoma that is androgen receptor positive (AR+), will test the combined therapy of the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab and the androgen deprivation therapy goserelin. This multi-site study is now open to accrual at the University of Illinois Cancer Center (University of Illinois at Chicago); Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Iowa; University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center; University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center; Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota; Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University; and University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center.

The study, BTCRC-HN17-111, “Phase II trial of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and pembrolizumab for advanced stage androgen receptor-positive salivary gland carcinoma,” is being conducted to see whether blocking receptors in AR+ salivary gland tumors will cause the cells to stop growing or cause cell death.

Salivary gland tumors are rare, with an incidence of approximately 2.5 to 3 cases per 100,000 annually in the Western world, and account for 3 to 5 percent of all head and neck cancers. Currently, there is no standard therapy for treating this type of cancer. Patients with advanced AR+ salivary gland tumors are usually treated with either surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy.

“The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that hormonal therapy with androgen deprivation therapy will increase the response rate to immunotherapy with pembrolizumab,” said Manish Patel, DO, sponsor-investigator of the study and a medical oncologist at the University of Minnesota Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation. “What we will be looking at is the objective response rate or disease control with this combination in patients with androgen receptor positive salivary gland tumors.” Read More

October 9, 2020:

Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium investigators recently presented an E-Poster on the BTCRC-GU16-043 study during the ESMO 2020 Virtual Congress.

The clinical trial is investigating whether adding guadecitabine, a drug that targets DNA methylation, might increase the proportion of patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) who respond to treatment with durvalumab, a checkpoint-inhibitor drug that targets the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway.

“In the past decade, checkpoint inhibitors have been a valuable addition to the therapeutic armamentarium of kidney cancer. However, not all patients benefit from this therapy, and there is an unmet need to further improve the clinical outcomes with novel combination strategies,” said co-author Rohan Garje, MD, a genitourinary medical oncologist and researcher at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Preclinical studies have shown the synergy of hypomethylating agents and checkpoint inhibitors in enhancing anti-tumor efficacy. To evaluate this hypothesis, the ambitious collaboration of Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium members led to the development of this study. The preliminary safety results were presented at ESMO Virtual Congress 2020.”

See abstract.

Of the initial six patients enrolled in the study, the combination therapy was deemed safe with acceptable toxicity and promising anti-tumor efficacy. Guadecitabine at the dose of 45 mg/m2 SC daily for 5 days along with the standard dose of durvalumab (1500 mg, IV every 4 weeks on Day 8) was deemed safe for further evaluation.

The study authors include:

• Yousef Zakharia, MD – University of Iowa
• Yilun Sun, PhD – University of Michigan
• Rohan Garje, MBBS – University of Iowa
• Eric A. Singer, MD, MA, MS, FACS – Rutgers University
• Monika D. Joshi, MD, MRCP – Penn State University
• David J. Peace, MD – University of Illinois at Chicago
• Ajjai S. Alva, MBBS – University of Michigan

The phase II portion of the study is ongoing and additional results, along with biomarker correlatives, will be presented at future scientific meetings.

For more information on this clinical trial, including full eligibility requirements, visit clinicaltrials.gov (study #NCT03308396).

About the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium: The Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium was created in 2013 to transform the conduct of cancer research through collaborative, hypothesis-driven, highly translational oncology trials that leverage the scientific and clinical expertise of Big Ten universities. The goal of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium is to create a unique team-research culture to drive science rapidly from ideas to new approaches to cancer treatment. Within this innovative environment, today’s research leaders collaborate with and mentor the research leaders of tomorrow with the unified goal of improving the lives of all patients with cancer.

About the Big Ten Conference: The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in the lives of students competing in intercollegiate athletics and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness. The broad-based programs of the 14 Big Ten institutions will provide over $200 million in direct financial support to more than 9,800 students for more than 11,000 participation opportunities on 350 teams in 42 different sports. The Big Ten sponsors 28 official conference sports, 14 for men and 14 for women, including the addition of men’s ice hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse since 2013. For more information, visit www.bigten.org.

October 1, 2020:

Applications are now open for a nationwide integrative oncology training program. The Integrative Oncology Scholars Program at the University of Michigan is funded by a National Cancer Institute R25 grant. It has the joint goals of training 100 integrative oncology (IO) leaders over 4 years and facilitating partnerships between IO leaders and complementary practitioners within their communities. Read More

September 29, 2020:

A phase Ib Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium multi-center study is testing the safety and efficacy of the monoclonal antibody gemtuzumab ozogamicin when combined with the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax in adults with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia.

The study is open to accrual at the University of Illinois Cancer Center in Chicago, Ill.; the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center in Indianapolis, Ind.; the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.; and the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska.

Acute Myeloid Leukemia, also known as AML, is a disease that occurs when the bone marrow creates abnormal myeloblasts (a type of white blood cell), or, less frequently abnormal red blood cells or platelets. In the United States, approximately 21,450 new cases occurred in 2019. Typically, adults age 65 and older are at greater risk of being diagnosed with AML and prognosis for survival remains poor, especially with relapsed or refractory disease.

People with AML are usually treated with chemotherapy and sometimes with targeted therapies.

The primary goal of BTCRC-AML17-113, “Phase Ib study of the safety and efficacy of Gemtuzumab Ozogamicin (GO) and Venetoclax in patients with relapsed or refractory CD33+ acute myeloid leukemia,” is to find the maximum tolerated dose of venetoclax when combined with gemtuzumab ozogamicin. Read More