AbbVie partners with Sarah Cannon Research Institute to accelerate cancer studies

AbbVie has teamed up with the Sarah Cannon Research Institute to enhance the pace of its cancer drug clinical development programs.

The deal will leverage SCRI’s network of 1,300 physicians and 200 locations in 20 US states to “enhance the delivery” of oncology-focused clinical trials. Financial terms were not disclosed.

In particular, the firm cited SCRI’s Accelero model — a system designed to use health records to optimize patient identification and enrollment to accelerate activation times — as a focus of the collaboration.

Svetlana Kobina, vice president of oncology at AbbVie, said, “Through close collaboration with SCRI and its community sites, we hope to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the treatment paths and health needs of patients living with cancer.”

SCRI CEO Dee Anna Smith said, “Working together, we can expedite the development of more treatment options and transform clinical trial delivery, providing greater access to cutting-edge therapies for patients close to home.”

The agreement is similar to the deal the Nashville, Tennessee-based institute signed with Anglo-Swedish drug developer AstraZeneca in March last year. At the time, AstraZeneca said the idea was to leverage SCRI’s trial and health record data integration system.

The AbbVie deal also builds on the partnership SCRI set up with McKesson in 2022, which focused on improving access to cancer drug research through collaboration with community clinics.

Cancer drug pipeline

News of the SCRI partnership comes just days before AbbVie is due to provide details of its cancer drug development program at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

In a statement in May, AbbVie said it would share “key data from its broad oncology portfolio,” citing Temab-A (telisotuzumab adizutecan), a candidate antibody-drug conjugate lung cancer treatment, as an example.

Lead investigator Ross Camidge from the University of Colorado Cancer Center, said in a pre-ASCO announcement, that “the anti-tumor activity of Temab-A in patients with pretreated, advanced EGFR-mutated non-squamous NSCLC is encouraging and supports further exploration.”

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