The OCRP Clinical Trials Academy

In 2022, we found that there is a need to train people on clinical trials, okay, and this is why we started Clinical Trial Academy. And Sarah and Amanda, they there are the leadership team appointed. This year we are going through this programmatic review. We are going to select the early-career investigator or scholars for this academy.

So, I head a lab that is focused on ovarian tumor immunology, and one of the treatment regimens that we tested in our lab was successful in controlling cancer growth in mice and was translated to a clinical trial. And that experience was incredibly meaningful for me, because it meant that the work we were doing in the lab now mattered to patients I was treating in the clinic. And that experience taught me a lot about how data is moved to the clinic and what kind of evidence is required to develop a clinical trial and how many stakeholders there are involved in developing clinical concepts and clinical protocols. And so, together with Amanda Nickles Fader, we developed the one-year program initially called the SGO Bridges Research Initiative, with the support of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, to help other early-career investigators learn about clinical research and learn about how to bring concepts forward and also how to integrate translational science with those clinical concepts. And now it's been expanded to a two-year program through a collaboration with the GOG Foundation, but those programs don't provide funding for the projects, and they don't provide funding or support for protected time for the investigators. And so, I see the OCRP opportunity as a real commitment to these investigators, providing them with grant funding for their concepts and a longer term commitment to mentoring and training to get their trials up and launched and we're really excited to move this forward.

The evolution of OCRP has been phenomenal with the concept of the academies. We build these young people and train them to dedicate careers in ovarian cancer, and we build a network that then they can interact with each other, share knowledge, share resources, share a lot of different things, which has really amped up the output. We've done that on the basic translational science component and now we're embarking on that in the clinical trial component, which, to me as a clinician and clinical trialist, is probably one of the most exciting components of this evolution in OCRP.

The Ovarian Cancer Academy will now start collaborating directly with ovarian cancer clinical doctors and, so in the next several years, take our laboratory findings from the bench to the bedside thanks to the DOD’s funding. And that'll be a really exciting opportunity for people to know that there are really talented investigators that in their early stages of their careers that are just completely dedicated to finding a cure for ovarian cancer.

The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs does a better job at addressing issues of importance than some of the other organizations do, and that's simply because of the way those programs are structured. What makes it so special is high-risk, high reward. So, in other words, if there's an idea, just an idea, that might work, we can fund that kind of program.

Nobody can be an expert in all of the things you need to know to run a successful clinical trial anymore, and so we're going to start to build a network of people who are focused and committed to clinical research. And partnering with the Ovarian Cancer Translational Academy will give them interactions with translational scientists to really make sure that the trials that they're designing are based on cutting edge translational science, and that those partnerships will be sustainable moving forward through their career. And so, as the academy gets started, and starts to grow in size, we'll have a larger and larger network of people who are really committed to doing innovative clinical research and who can collaborate with one another to move the field forward. There are different kinds of cancers within the umbrella of ovarian cancer, and knowing that has really shaped the way clinical research has evolved by developing resources and networks that are committed to advancing novel concepts. Scientists who might be studying something that could apply to multiple different kinds of cancers have the opportunity to move it forward to the clinic through these collaborations. And I think it's a form of advocacy for the patients we treat to make sure that the most impactful science is going to benefit them through these collaborations. There are some kinds of trials that might not be funded through PhRMA or through cooperative groups. An example might be repurposing drugs that are already approved for some other indication, like statins, that might have efficacy in ovarian cancer. But getting funding for a trial like that is a little more complicated because those drugs are available and not the priority of the companies that's made them. Or other innovative interventions that might not be directly fundable by PhRMA. And so, I hope that this will provide also an alternate way to fund clinical trials and allow us to be creative in ways that that might not be the standard approach to novel drug development. Dr. Fader and I are really looking forward to launching this program, and we hope that anybody who's interested will consider applying. We look forward to developing relationships, multi-disciplinary collaborations, and really launching this new academy in collaboration with the success of the existing translational academy.