Agilent Technologies and GE Healthcare join WIN consortium

22 Feb 2011

The Worldwide Innovative Networking in Personalized cancer medicine (WIN) Consortium is a joint initiative from the Institut Gustave Roussy (IGR, France) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC, USA).

The founding members are 17 academic cancer centres across all continents, National Breast Cancer Foundation, Sage Bionetworks and three major industry partners Agilent Technologies, GE Healthcare, and Life Technologies.

“Its aim is to address the challenge of increasing the efficacy of cancer healthcare globally through personalized therapy and early diagnostics, in diverse populations from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” says Dr John Mendelsohn, Chairman of WIN.

“We are extremely proud to participate to the WIN consortium, and will actively participate to make this project a success,” said Mark Vossenaar of Agilent), Robert Dann of GE Healthcare and Martin Naley of Life Technologies in a joint statement.

The WIN Consortium has also announced the constitution of its independent Scientific Advisory Board, chaired by Dr Richard L Schilsky and constituted by worldwide experts: Leroy Hood, Phillip Febbo, Daniel Hayes, David Tuveson, Guido Kroemer, Laura Van T Veer, Gary Rosner, Yves Lussier, Julio Celis, Manfred Schmitt and Ji Zhang. The Scientific Advisory Board has already started selecting the first scientific projects of WIN.

“Our overarching goals are to achieve more rapid and efficient translation of groundbreaking personalized cancer medicine discoveries into the standards for clinical care, to significantly improve the outcomes and quality of life of cancer patients, with a very ambitious goal of generating the first relevant study results within 3-5 years.” says Dr Richard L. Schilsky, Chairman of WIN SAB.

The 3rd WIN symposium, which will be held on 6-8 July, will be “a forum for open discussion in which your expertise and input is crucial. It is also a unique opportunity to hear more about WIN and consider taking an active part in this challenging project.” says Dr. Vladimir Lazar, Chief Operating Officer of WIN.

For more information on the symposium see: www.winconsortium.org/symposium.html