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A formal affiliation agreement with hospitals in Grand Island, North Platte and Scottsbluff will expand all cancer clinical trials at the University of Nebraska Medical Center Eppley Cancer Center to people in those communities.
St. Francis Medical Center in Grand Island, Great Plains Regional Medical Center in North Platte and Regional West Medical Center in Scottsbluff have all been designated Eppley Cancer Center affiliation sites.
Talks are underway with two other Nebraska hospitals including, Good Samaritan in Kearney and St. Elizabeth in Lincoln, in hopes of establishing affiliation agreements with those hospitals in the next six months.
“These agreements will allow cancer patients across Nebraska to have access to clinical trials currently available at UNMC,” said Kenneth Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center.
All of the hospitals represented in the affiliation agreement already have established cancer centers.
“The agreement gives them the ability to be recognized for their cancer care and research activities, as well as connects our oncologists with their physicians, nurses and pharmacies in their communities,” Dr. Cowan said.
Before any clinical trials are offered at the sites, he said, the UNMC principal investigators involved will make site visits to establish the proper protocol procedures with the doctors, nurses and pharmacists in the participating communities.
Once those are in place the hospitals will begin offering the clinical trials to their patients.
“They have agreed to enroll at least 10 percent of their patients into the clinical trials offered,” Dr. Cowan said.
All of the data collected will be submitted electronically through the National Cancer Institute’s Web based clinical trial software package the Eppley Cancer Center has access to as a NCI designated cancer center.
“The goal is to make the transfer of information as seamless as possible,” Dr. Cowan said.
One of the first protocols that will be offered to patients at participating sites is to enroll in the breast cancer registry.
The registry, Dr. Cowan said, will establish a breast cancer biospecimen bank to assess the risk and prognostic factors for patients in Nebraska.
It would be the first statewide registry of its kind, he said.
Once established, Dr. Cowan said he hopes to expand it to other types of cancers.
The cancer biospecimen bank would be used to look for biomarkers of disease for early detection, targeted therapeutics and a better prognosis for cancer patients at the molecular level, he said.
“We want to provide the best cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention to every patient in the state,” Dr. Cowan said of the affiliation agreement and cancer registry.
“Our goal is to expand these affiliations to include every major hospital cancer treatment facility around the state so that every person in Nebraska would have access to our clinical trials if they are interested,” he said.
UNMC is the only public health science center in the state. Its educational programs are responsible for training more health professionals practicing in Nebraska than any other institution. Through their commitment to education, research, patient care and outreach, UNMC and its hospital partner, The Nebraska Medical Center, have established themselves as one of the country’s leading centers in cancer, transplantation biology, bioterrorism preparedness, neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases, genetics, biomedical technology and ophthalmology. UNMC’s research funding from external sources now exceeds $82 million annually and has resulted in the creation of more than 2,400 highly skilled jobs in the state. UNMC’s physician practice group, UNMC Physicians, includes 513 physicians in 50 specialties and subspecialties who practice primarily in The Nebraska Medical Center. For more information, go to UNMC’s Web site at www.unmc.edu.
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