Four New Institutions Join AACR Project GENIE® Consortium
PHILADELPHIA — To further its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has selected four new institutions that genomically profile and treat diverse and representative patient populations to join the AACR Project GENIE® (GENIE) consortium.
As previously announced during the AACR Annual Meeting 2023 Opening Ceremony, the new members of the GENIE consortium are:
- Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA)
- Korea University Anam Hospital
- Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans
- Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
“We are thrilled to welcome these esteemed institutions to the GENIE consortium,” said Philippe Bedard, MD, chair of the AACR Project GENIE Steering Committee. “This expansion will enhance diversity in the GENIE registry and accelerate our ability to learn new insights that can benefit all cancer patients.”
There are now 22 institutions contributing clinical-grade genomic and clinical data to the GENIE registry. Data from the new participating institutions are expected in the July 2024 public release, which will provide the research community with a more diverse data set and catalyze new analytic dimensions.
“Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is excited to join Project GENIE and help strengthen diversity of pediatric cancer patients in the consortium,” said James Amatruda, MD, PhD, head of Basic and Translational Research in CHLA’s Cancer and Blood Disease Institute. “The ongoing strong collaboration of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute with CHLA’s Center for Personalized Medicine is dedicated to serving the needs of all children in the racially and ethnically diverse population of Los Angeles County, the state of California, and beyond. In bringing this expertise to the GENIE consortium, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles will help ensure that the benefits of precision medicine extend to all children, including historically underserved populations.”
“Our team at Korea University Anam Hospital is very honored to join AACR Project GENIE, and we hope to contribute to the global precision medicine effort for conquering cancer in the future by providing East Asia’s representative genome-clinical data to GENIE,” said Kyong Hwa Park, MD, professor in the Division of Medical Oncology/Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, at Korea University Anam Hospital.
“Louisiana is home to unique populations such as the Acadians and Creoles, with distinctive genetic risk factors. Yet, our cancer patients remain understudied and access to precision oncology has been historically limited,” said Lucio Miele, MD, PhD, Cancer Crusaders Professor and chair in the Department of Genetics and Assistant Dean for Translational Science at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans. “Our participation in the GENIE consortium will expand the diversity of the data available to the oncology community and enable rigorous investigations of the relationship between comorbidities, molecular biomarkers, and outcomes for patients in Louisiana and beyond.”
“Sylvester’s South Florida catchment area is one of the most diverse regions in the U.S. and is often thought to represent the country’s future demographic makeup,” said Stephan C. Schürer, PhD, associate director of data science at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Our team is excited to join this effort toward the shared goal of eliminating health disparities and improving cancer outcomes for all patients.”
The new institutions were selected from among a number of well-qualified applicants. GENIE plans to grow the consortium further as capacity continues to increase.
The first public GENIE data release was available to the global community in January 2017. The next release, GENIE 14.0-public, will be released in July 2023. The AACR Project GENIE registry will contain more than 183,000 sequenced samples from more than 161,000 patients, making it among the largest fully public cancer genomic data sets released to date.