[June 26, 2014]

The CEO Roundtable on Cancer joins Worldwide Innovative Networking (WIN) Consortium for personalized cancer medicine

At the fourth annual Worldwide Innovative Networking (WIN) Consortium in personalized cancer medicine, it was announced that the CEO Roundtable on Cancer has accepted membership in this global cancer research collaborative, joining stakeholders from North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East seeking to address the challenge of increasing the efficacy of genetically-targeted cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

The CEO Roundtable on Cancer, a non-profit organization of CEOs founded by former President George H. W. Bush, has historically sought opportunities to share the tenets of its CEO-led cancer prevention and research innovation approach globally.

"Cancer's impact knows no geopolitical boundaries, and therefore, our approach to preventing and overcoming cancer must be equally broad," said Christopher A. Viehbacher, Chief Executive Officer, Sanofi and Chairman of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer. "We are proud to stand among other WIN Consortium members to lend our expertise and join together in a truly global approach to finding cures and treatments to defeat cancer."

In April, 2014, Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), launched a data-sharing platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org), with the goal of advancing research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world. The platform is designed to provide one place where the global community can broadly share, integrate and analyze historical patient level, comparator arm data from academic and industry phase III cancer clinical trials. Initial data sets were provided by AstraZeneca, Bayer, Celgene, Janssen Research and Development, an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, Meorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Pfizer, and Sanofi US. Other organizations, including the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (sponsored by the National Cancer Institute), Amgen, and Quintiles also have committed to provide additional cancer data sets. Project Data Sphere, LLC also teamed with CEO Roundtable member SAS (News - Alert) Institute Inc. (SAS), a leader in data and health analytics, to provide state-of-the-art analytic tools available to registered users within the online environment.

The CEO Cancer Gold Standard^™ was created by the CEO Roundtable to recognize and accredit employers' commitment to reducing cancer risk by promoting healthy lifestyle choices, encouraging early detection through cancer screenings, and ensuring access to quality treatment for their own employees and their covered family members. Since 2013, the CEO Roundtable on Cancer-China has been working with government, industry and international cancer experts to build on the now four and a half million employees and family members benefiting from the vision and leadership of Gold Standard employers in order to share the benefits of this CEO-driven wellness and prevention model in China.

The Worldwide Innovative Networking (WIN) Consortium in personalized cancer medicine was initiated in 2010 with leadership from the Institut Gustave Roussy (France) and CEO Roundtable Member The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to accelerate the pace and reduce the cost of deploying novel cancer treatments and initiate research projects in a global consortium guided by an independent scientific advisory board.

Earlier this month, Project HOPE presented its 2014 Global Impact Award to the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, honoring a peer non-profit organization achieving significant advances in global health. In addition to its ongoing, global, workplace health and wellness efforts through its CEO Cancer Gold Standard accreditation program, Project HOPE noted the leadership of the CEO Roundtable in promoting much-needed sharing of critical clinical trial data in oncology.

About the CEO Roundtable on Cancer
The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was founded in 2001, when former President George H.W. Bush challenged a group of executives to "do something bold and venturesome about cancer within your own corporate families." The CEOs responded by creating and encouraging the widespread adoption of the CEO Cancer Gold Standard which calls for organizations to evaluate their health benefits and workplace culture and take extensive, concrete actions in five key areas of health and wellness to address cancer in the workplace. The Life Sciences Consortium (LSC) (www.ceo-lsc.org) was formed by the CEO Roundtable on Cancer as a means of bringing together leading oncology pharmaceutical/ biotechnology companies to enable a transformation in research and development activities. Their aim is to deliver more effective oncology therapies to patients faster by collaborating on solving issues common to all cancer companies engaged in drug discovery and development that cannot be solved by any single company alone. An earlier outcome of the LSC was the creation of the Standard Terms of Agreement for Research Trial (START) clauses in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute. The creation of these "common language" contract templates aims to shorten the contract negotiation time prior to opening a clinical research trial. For more information, please visit www.CEORoundtableOnCancer.org.

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