ATLANTA (April 07, 2017) – The Brain and Spinal Cord Tumor Program at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has been selected as one of 11 collaborative institutions in the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC), a highly-selective National Cancer Institute (NCI) cooperative group specializing in improving the treatment of brain tumors through novel trials for children with brain cancer.
“We are honored to join the PBTC as a new southeast regional site, hoping that our leadership, infrastructure and expertise in early phase clinical trials will benefit the collaboration of the group,” says Tobey MacDonald, MD, Director of the Brain and Spinal Cord Tumor Program at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Emory University School of Medicine. “We hope that this gives our patients and families at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center confidence that they have access to the most promising therapies available in the United States, right here in Atlanta.”
A multidisciplinary research organization devoted to the study of correlative tumor biology and new therapies for pediatric brain cancer, PBTC's mission is to contribute rapidly and effectively to the understanding and cure of these tumors through the conduct of multi-center, multidisciplinary, innovative studies with designs and analyses based on uniformly high quality statistical science.
“The selection of our center for PBTC membership is a testament to our increased presence in the development and conduct of innovative clinical trials in pediatric neuro-oncology,” said Cynthia Wetmore, MD, PhD, Director of the Developmental Therapeutics Program at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Emory University School of Medicine. “Our team is committed to developing new techniques, treatment and cures for children and young adults with brain tumors. Through our collaboration with the PBTC, we will have a forum to expand our ideas and strategies and make them available nationally. We look forward to sharing these laboratory and clinical science discoveries, in order to identify superior treatment strategies for children who need them across the country.”
The group includes Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Texas Children’s Cancer Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Colorado.
The Brain and Spinal Cord Tumor Program at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center is the largest pediatric neuro-oncology center in the Southeast and a leading U.S. site for pediatric oncology, with more than 450 new childhood cancer diagnoses each year. U.S. News & World Report ranked the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in the top 10 for pediatric cancer in 2016.
Children’s is part of the Atlanta-based Pediatric Research Alliance with Emory University, Winship Cancer Institute, Morehouse School of Medicine and Georgia Institute of Technology.