The Cancer Vaccine Collaborative, a joint program of the Cancer Research Institute, Inc. (CRI) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Ltd (LICR), has been named one of eight finalists for The Collaboration Prize, a national cash award of $250,000 presented to an outstanding model of nonprofit collaboration.
The Lodestar Foundation, in association with the Arizona-Indiana-Michigan (AIM) Alliance, created The Collaboration Prize in an effort to demonstrate how nonprofit resources can be used more effectively to create greater impact.
The Cancer Vaccine Collaborative was selected from a competitive pool of over 644 U.S.-based nominations.
The Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (the Collaborative) is the world's only international network of cancer vaccine clinical trials sites and immune monitoring laboratories. It was established in 2001 by CRI and LICR to address their shared goal of accelerating the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines.
"The formation of the Collaborative was motivated by our realization that our two organizations share common objectives," says CRI executive director Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, Ph.D. "These goals—understanding the immunological response to cancer, harnessing that knowledge for patient benefit, and accelerating the translation of basic research into new cancer therapies—could best be achieved by combining our resources and requiring that our scientists collaborate rather than compete."
According to Mr. Edward A. McDermott Jr., LICR president, The Lodestar Foundation is to be congratulated for highlighting such collaborations. "This couldn't be a more timely moment to celebrate the successful sharing of resources and responsibilities by non-profits. We can do so much more, in any charity sector, by combining our strengths rather than competing."
The Collaboration Prize winner will be announced on March 5, 2009 at a seminar in Scottsdale, Arizona on nonprofit effectiveness hosted by Lodestar and the Association of Small Foundations. The winner – chosen by a Final Selection Panel of leaders from the nonprofit and business worlds – will provide the most successful model of collaboration meeting the prize's criteria (as described on the award's Web site, www.thecollaborationprize.org). All eight finalists will be invited to attend the seminar and to participate in panel discussions to share their experiences.
The announcement of the winner will come at a time when many nonprofits are desperately seeking ways to remain viable in an increasingly harsh fundraising environment.
"The economic crisis has decreased charitable giving and that has dramatically increased interest in collaborations and mergers among nonprofits, particularly with respect to eliminating duplication and sharing resources," says Lodestar board chairman, Jerry Hirsch. "Though such strategies can be an imperative during this economic crisis, collaborations and mergers are best practices that should be considered even in the best of economic times."
The CRI/LICR Cancer Vaccine Collaborative includes eminent clinical investigators from leading research and medical clinical trial sites and first-class immune monitoring laboratories, which are supported by a comprehensive independent trials management infrastructure that provides regulatory, safety, and compliance expertise and oversight, trial management, shared data collection software, intellectual property management, and funding.
Collaborative researchers are able to test a wide variety of new reagents and multi-component constructs. By designing complementary trials to be run in parallel at multiple sites, and by standardizing the types of immunological measurements taken, the Collaborative helps to extract the immunological knowledge necessary to eventually optimize a therapeutic vaccine construct, at a significantly accelerated pace compared to efforts carries out solely by competing industry interests.
Since the program's inception in 2001, the Collaborative has completed or is currently conducting more than 35 single-variable, Phase I cancer vaccine trials, as well as a randomized, double-blind, multicenter Phase II cancer vaccine trial, which have produced some of the most comprehensive knowledge on the human immune response to the cancer-specific antigen NY-ESO-1, found in a variety of cancers.