Dr Michael Korn Outlines the Collaborative Nature of the Caris Precision Oncology Alliance

The Caris Precision Oncology Alliance has brought together academic institutions and community practices with the goal of performing research and exchanging evidence and ideas for new types of tests, said W. Michael Korn, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco, and chief medical officer of Caris Life Sciences.

Transcript

What is the purpose of the Caris Precision Oncology Alliance? How do members collaborate?

There is actually some overlap with what QCCA [Quality Cancer Care Alliance] is doing, and I think it's an extremely important initiative. So, what this is a now pretty large group of mostly academic institutions that are affiliated with Caris Life Sciences—in terms of being affiliated with a goal of performing research together, with the goal of exchanging evidence on how to interpret our findings, and exchange ideas and express needs for new types of tests.

So, there are now over 40 institutions all across the United States, including, I believe, currently 11 NCI [National Cancer Institute]–designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers. So, there's a lot of intellectual power now coming together. It's a very dynamic organization, and we perform many, many research projects in collaboration with these institutions. And it's really has been tremendously beneficial for both sides.

There are also some more community-oriented institutions [that are a] part of that. And I think that's where the overlap really exists. For there are, you know, institutions that have affiliated practices in their surrounding. And so, I think there's a real overlap, and we recognize that understanding what's happening in kind of an oncologist’s practices, not academic [medical centers], is extremely important, because that's the vast majority of [where] patients are being treated.