Since 1941, MD Anderson has attracted many of the brightest minds in medicine to Houston, where they’ve changed the world and the way cancer is treated through innovation, creativity and breakthroughs. Their commitment has resulted in improved outcomes and a steady rise in survival rates for cancer patients around the world.
That tradition of discovery continues in 2017, and will carry us through the years to come as the advances of today lay the foundation for the cancer care of tomorrow.
Annual Report 2016 : 75 years of discovery
Better data — and more of it — translates to better care
“Cancers are exceptionally adaptive in the face of treatment pressure,” says Andrew Futreal,Ph.D., chair of Genomic Medicine and co-leader of MD Anderson’s Moon Shots Program™.
“We know a tumor after therapy is likely to be different than before, but we haven’t done a good job of tackling this from a research perspective until now.”
To understand how tumors evolve and resist treatment, Futreal is helping lead APOLLO, which stands for Adaptive Patient-Oriented Longitudinal Learning and Optimization.
It’s a systematic approach that relies on taking blood samples and biopsies before, during and after treatment, and conducting deep molecular and immune analysis of those tumor samples to understand what causes them to respond to or resist a given treatment.
In the next two years, APOLLO is scheduled to conduct such analyses in 2,100 patients enrolled in 28 high-priority clinical trials for melanoma, multiple myeloma, glioblastoma, lymphoma, sarcoma, lung, breast, colorectal, pancreas and ovarian cancers, and cancers caused by the human papillomavirus.
Results of these analyses, plus clinical information, will be added to the Translational Research Accelerator (TRA), which is a big data platform that integrates longitudinal clinical and research data — the same sample tracked at different points in time — to support translational research throughout the institution. These enormous amounts of data are housed in data centers like the one pictured here.
Information from approximately 250,000 patients treated at MD Anderson since 2012, along with research data from Moon Shots™ platforms, has been loaded into the secure database. The TRA will provide researchers with an unprecedented capacity to more quickly and efficiently generate science-based inquiries in the pursuit of better cancer treatment.
“APOLLO, with its pipeline of comprehensive data feeding the Translational Research Accelerator, drives our vision of every patient contributing to, and potentially benefiting from, research,” says Futreal.
More Stories From Annual Report
Treatment puts the freeze on breast cancer
Doctors use liquid nitrogen to freeze and destroy tumors. There’s no hospitalization, no sedation, no scarring and no pain.
One nurse’s prescription for curbing pain pill addiction
To combat opioid dependency, Tonya Edwards — a nurse in MD Anderson’s Supportive Care Center — created a strategy for detecting patients who may be at risk getting hooked on or are already addicted to pain killers
A ‘reduced-intensity’ stem cell transplant was the right match
The less-risky transplant helped Cinda Matthews put her chronic myelomonocytic leukemia in long-term remission
Cancer Prevention: How a division came together
Under the leadership of Charles LeMaistre, M.D., MD Anderson’s prevention program became an international model of research and service initiatives
Impressive results against BRCA-positive breast cancer show drug’s game-changing potential
The success of a clinical trial of a new targeted therapy could lead to a new standard of care
Cutting off a cancer’s food supply
A drug developed at MD Anderson to starve cancer is tested on an aggressive leukemia
Breakthrough research targets melanoma’s resistance to immunotherapy
MD Anderson investigators are getting closer to understanding why some tumors respond to immunotherapy and others don’t
Drug development platform revolves around collaborative partnerships
ORBIT is focused on advancing novel therapeutics for several forms of cancer
