CHOP Helps Develop Platform to Speed Up Drug Development for Kids with Cancer

–The NCI-backed “Molecular Targets Platform” will streamline and catalyze drug development by harmonizing data about pediatric cancer targets and pathways—

Excerpt from the Press Release:

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has helped launch a new computational platform that will harmonize pediatric cancer data, allowing researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and advocacy groups to accelerate the pace of drug development for pediatric cancer. With funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) via a subcontract with Leidos Biomedical Research, current operator of the NCI’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, CHOP researchers have created the Molecular Targets Platform to facilitate pediatric research in response to the Research to Accelerate Cures and Equity (RACE) for Children Act, which requires companies to test cancer drugs in children that are used in adults when there is a shared molecular target.

“Through this project, we are using the power of integrated data to solve childhood cancer’s biggest challenges,” said co-principal investigator Deanne M. Taylor, PhD, Director of Bioinformatics in the Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, who is leading the development of the new platform. “The Molecular Targets Platform will empower different communities to study new ways of understanding and treating pediatric cancer and will provide an invaluable resource for discovery and drug development. This platform will also promote new hypotheses as people use this computational ecosystem to make new discoveries.”

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