Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) today announced the launch of Amgen Partners of Choice (APoC), a new network that brings together Amgen’s oncology research and development experts and world-class clinical leaders at eight research centers across the globe. The APoC member institutions are Asan Medical Center (Seoul, South Korea), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Mass.), Essen University Hospital (Essen, Germany), Institute Gustave Roussy (Paris, France), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, N.Y.), Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne, Australia), Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (Toronto, Canada) and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona, Spain). As part of Amgen’s mission to improve care through partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, the network fosters academic collaboration to advance new treatment options for patients with the greatest unmet needs.
“We have a big goal – to make profound differences in changing the standard of cancer care – and we are committed to doing that through collaboration,” said Jean-Charles Soria, MD, PhD, senior vice president, Research and Development at Amgen. “Through Amgen Partners of Choice, we hope to foster earlier, deeper, and more frequent academic collaboration to fuel quicker progress for patients facing complex, difficult-to-treat cancers.”
The network aims to create multiple collaboration channels globally with the goal of expediting the transition of new, transformational programs to leaders in the clinic. Current APoC projects are focused on select disease areas and tumor types including thoracic, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary cancers.