The National Cancer Institute (NCI) selected eight of its designated cancer centers to be part of a national initiative to increase minority access to investigational targeted cancer therapy. Sylvester is one those select cancer centers.

CATCH-UP.2020 stands for Create Access to Targeted Cancer Therapy for Underserved Populations. According to the NCI, the cancer centers that comprise this initiative “demonstrate robust ability to accrue minority/underserved populations to the National Cancer Institute’s Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network sponsored precision medicine cancer trials”. 

Sylvester has received a P30 administrative supplement award of $550,000 for one year.

“We were awarded this competitive grant due to our ability to provide cutting edge clinical trials to patients in South Florida from diverse backgrounds. Significantly, this award from the NCI will allow us to bring early phase clinical trials, most of which are only available at a few sites, to our region” said Jonathan Trent, M.D., Ph.D., one of the project leaders for this national initiative and Sylvester’s associate director of clinical research.

There are 49 studies in the CATCH-UP.2020 clinical trial portfolio for patients with solid tumors and blood malignancies. As a participating cancer center, at least half of the patients accrued to these NCI ETCTN sponsored trials must belong to a minority and or underserved population.