On April 28-30, 2021, Childhood Cancer International – Europe (CCI Europe) will organize a conference within the Annual Meeting of the Society for Pediatric Oncology (SIOPE). CCI Europe is one of the valued Partners that participate in the HARMONY Patient Cluster.
Around thirty years ago, the main challenge in managing Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in children was finding the best therapy for high risk patients. Now, around 90% of children with ALL are cured. The key challenge ahead is to identify the patients that can be treated with less chemotherapy. Professor Anthony Moorman of Newcastle University will explain how the HARMONY Alliance can help achieve this goal at the virtual SIOPE annual meeting & CCI Europe conference on April 28-30, 2021.
The presentation of Professor Moorman is scheduled on Wednesday, April 28 and specifically in the following session:
The treatment of childhood blood cancer has dramatically improved in the past decades. Many prognostic factors have already been identified, including age, gender, genetic profile of the leukemic cells, and minimal residual disease after the first round of chemotherapy. These factors can predict the risk of relapse to a certain extent. However, they have largely been studied in isolation so far.
By pooling data of thousands of patients, HARMONY researchers will be able to study combinations of prognostic factors, for instance minimal residual disease in combination with genetic profile. This may allow researchers to more precisely predict clinical course and drug response, enabling physicians to rapidly select the most promising and least toxic treatment for a particular patient. The pediatric research within HARMONY will first focus on Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) because this is the most common blood cancer in children. Later, the team will study genetic abnormalities that span various blood cancers.
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The HARMONY Alliance is a European Public–Private Partnership for Big Data in Hematology that is capturing and mining Big Data on various Hematologic Malignancies (blood cancers), including those in children. HARMONY Alliance, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, unites more than 100 organizations such as European medical associations, hospitals, research institutes, patient organizations, pharmaceutical and IT companies. HARMONY uses Big Data analytics to accelerate the development of more effective treatments for blood cancer patients. The aim is to accelerate the development of more effective treatments. Data are stored in HARMONY’s Big Data Platform, which has already identified over 60,000 anonymized patient records, making it one of the largest databases of its kind. Leading research teams are currently using this wealth of information to answer critical questions about hematologic malignancies that cannot be addressed with other methods.
CCI Europe participates in the HARMONY Patient Cluster, which is a unique group of seven European Patient Umbrella Organizations working in different areas of hematological diseases. CCI Europe is the largest umbrella organization for childhood cancer patient organizations in Europe, with 66 member-organizations across 33 European countries. Their goal is to ensure equal access to best-practice, state of the art medical and psychosocial cancer treatments and care for all children and adolescents fighting against cancer in Europe.
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SIOP Europe Virtual Annual Meeting 2021 is a joint meeting of different European Clinical Trials Groups, Young Oncologists and Parents & Survivors representatives. The meeting format includes novel session formats, interactive workshops and forums empowering the working groups to debate and disseminate the outcomes of the high quality clinical and basic research carried out in Europe. The scientific program of the Virtual Annual Meeting will focus on joint sessions between two or more groups, enabling direct interactions between tumor and clinical trial groups, parent groups, and survivors.
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Public-private partnership for Big Data in Hematology
HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Funding is received from the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement for HARMONY No. 116026 and grant agreement for HARMONY PLUS No. 945406. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
HARMONY Coordination Office
Institute of Biomedical Research of
Salamanca (IBSAL)
Salamanca, Spain
HARMONY Communications
European Hematology Association (EHA)
The Hague, The Netherlands
