Dartmouth Cancer Center is among 27 research institutions across North America that have been selected to be a part of the Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network (CITN), which is funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
As a new initiative in immunotherapy, the CITN will establish a network of top academic immunologists to conduct multicenter research on agents that boost patients’ own immune systems to fight their cancer.
The mission of the CITN is to select, design and conduct early-phase clinical trials using agents with known and proven biologic function. Through trials with these agents, the CITN will gather the necessary data to determine and develop the most promising of these agents for treating patients with cancer.
By coordinating the efforts of academia, industry and philanthropic foundations, the CITN hopes to speed the development of promising agents that have already been discovered but are not currently used to treat patients with cancer.
In choosing the institutions to participate in the CITN, the NCI evaluated the experience of the principal investigators and their institutions in immunotherapy clinical trials, and their ability to provide laboratory expertise in tumor immunology to support the trials.
Other institutions participating in the CITN include Baylor University, Dana Farber Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, University of California San Francisco, and others.