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About the Academic Breast Cancer Consortium (ABRCC)

Collaboration & Innovation in Cancer Research

The Academic Breast Cancer Consortium is an innovative research model that has brought together an expert team of institutions and investigators to design and rapidly complete clinical trials in breast cancer with the ultimate goal of identifying new drugs to treat this disease.

What is ABRCC?

ABRCC stands for the Academic Breast Cancer Consortium, an innovative and focused full service research model created to enhance the state of care for breast cancer patients, with a goal of expediting the process of identifying and efficiently testing active new compounds for the treatment of breast cancer. Our ability to rapidly design and execute focused clinical trials in these cancers will enhance our partner sponsors ability to make informed decisions on the development of their compounds. Ultimately, the Academic Breast Cancer Consortium’s goal is to serve as an important model for speeding time-to-market for drugs targeting all breast cancers.

The Consortium initiative originated from frustration over the lack of compounds currently on the market for cancers that could prove effective over the long term, and with the potential for targeting actual cancer-causing molecular events. The use of targeted agents presents opportunities that may reduce the problems associated with cytotoxic drugs that not only kill large numbers of cancer cells, but kill normal tissue as well, typically leading to severe side effects for cancer patients. The challenge was to create a new process for clinical trials that would be faster and more efficient, in order to expedite the identification and testing of targeted agents that are in development but still require evaluation for usefulness.

To that end we assembled the best possible team of institutions and investigators to assist in the design and rapid completion of Phase I and II clinical trials. These institutions were selected based upon criteria that included institutional commitment to a targeted cancer drug program, the Principal Investigator’s experience and expertise, and clinical research operations.

ABRCC officially launched its kick-off meeting in August 2014. The Academic Breast Cancer Consortium builds upon the complementary strengths of the member institutions selected for the Consortium.