FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Reher
President, ABC2
(650) 685-2200
John.Reher@abc2.org
Burlingame, August 1, 2022
I am pleased to provide you with this brief update on our progress at Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure (ABC2).
Our mission at ABC2 is to fund outstanding translational science, aimed at the discovery of a cure for brain cancer.
We identify leverageable opportunities and provide the catalyst to help advance the field in a far-reaching way. We
collaborate with academia, government agencies and private industry to overcome technical and financial barriers to
the development of new treatments and thereby accelerate the cure for brain cancer.
Overall Progress
Since our founding in 2001, ABC2 continues to make meaningful progress, including the following accomplishments:
- Awarded and tracked over 45 investigator awards that have led to:
- new approaches to customize therapies for individual patients – giving meaning and reality to the era of personalized medicine
- innovative methods to deliver promising agents to the brain for brain cancer and other brain disorders
- development and evaluation of novel therapies
- Entered over 100 therapies into our preclinical screening network for testing against brain cancer – at no charge to drug sponsors
- Increased the number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies working with us from 5 in 2001 to more than 35 to date
These and other efforts have increased the number of therapies going into the clinic to benefit patients. While we
cannot claim credit for all of the newly reported clinical therapies for Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), the number
of new trials has increased five-fold since our creation.
Partnership with CombinatoRx
During the past year, ABC2 formed a collaboration with the biotechnology company CombinatoRx, aimed at identifying
novel multi-target drugs. The sponsored research leverages the CombinatoRx proprietary combination highthroughput
screening platform in an effort to discover novel drug combinations that hit multiple targets relevant to
GBM, a deadly form of brain cancer.
This program is particularly exciting because the CombinatoRx compound library provides access to a large number
of agents that – although already approved as individual drugs – might otherwise never be tested in combination as
treatments for brain cancer. Additionally, through our previously established collaboration with Duke University,
any positive 'hits' from the CombinatoRx screening can then move rapidly to tests in Duke's animal models of brain
cancer. Furthermore, because the compounds are approved by global regulatory agencies, this process could lead to
near-term clinical trials in patients with GBM. Results to date indicate significant synergy for more than five novel
combinations in in-vitro assays, and we are proceeding to confirm the data in animal models before moving to the
clinic.
Brain Trust
ABC2 has a good record of accomplishment for networking with other brain cancer foundations and last October we decided
to reach out to other neuro-degenerative disease organizations as well. We invited representatives from three other foundations
to participate in our annual meeting to identify common problems in the development of therapies for neuro-degenerative
brain diseases. These organizations are: the Alzheimer's Association, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's
Research and The Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins. This collaboration, now called the Brain
Trust, hopes to expand to include many other brain organizations, companies and universities in funding other collaborative
efforts.
As a direct result of that meeting, the four foundations agreed to work together on a common and specific problem – the
delivery of effective therapies to the brain. In June, the Brain Trust network issued a request for proposal for applications
(RFA) for funding. This RFA focuses on technologies that can achieve selective targeting and/or delivery of therapeutic
agents past the blood brain barrier to specific regions or cells in the brain. By teaming together, we will be able to further
leverage all of our resources, overcome hurdles, and accelerate progress to bring new, promising therapies to patients. We
will announce the recipients later this year.
Increased Communication
To increase the visibility of brain cancer and our efforts, we have been more active in communicating with a number of audiences
beyond the traditional scientific arena. Our Chairman, Steve Case presented an update on ABC2 and its progress at the
January 2005 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference (video clip at www.abc2.org), and at the Milken Institute Global Conference
in April; and ABC2 was also profiled recently in BioCentury (May 30, 2022) and Worth (August 2005) magazines.
We thank you for your interest in our research and your generous support of our programs. We also appreciate feedback from
our friends and welcome any suggestions you might have to help move our organization closer to achieving its mission: to
accelerate the development of a cure for brain cancer.
Gratefully,
John Reher
Executive Director and President
Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, Inc.
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