Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today said it will partner with the North Shore-LIJ Health System serving the New York metropolitan area, through a more-than-$120 million clinical research collaboration designed to speed up cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment.
The research institution will spend the $120 million-plus to advance cancer therapeutics research, recruit, and train more clinician-scientists in oncology, and develop a new clinical cancer research unit at the North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute's headquarters in Lake Success, NY. The new research unit will support early-phase clinical studies of new cancer therapies, the institutions said.
Under the collaboration, clinician-scientists will be trained to perform preclinical cancer research and conduct early-stage human clinical trials. Positive findings in research and therapeutics will form the basis for advanced-phase clinical trials to be conducted both at North Shore-LIJ facilities and collaborating outside medical centers. According to the partner institutions, patients cared for at North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute facilities will benefit from increased access to these clinical studies.
“This is a transformative affiliation for both institutions, bringing the cutting-edge basic discovery science and translational cancer research at CSHL to one of the largest cancer treatment centers in the United States,” CSHL President & CEO Bruce Stillman, Ph.D., said in a statement.
CSHL has an annual operating budget of $145 million and more than 35 independent laboratories and faculty focused on basic and applied cancer research.
Added Michael Dowling, North Shore-LIJ’s president and CEO: “North Shore-LIJ oncologists will make CSHL's promising preclinical research available as innovative trials to select cancer patients at a much earlier stage, building on the clinical and translational research programs the health system has been offering its patients for more than 30 years and establishing our Cancer Institute as a destination for pioneering cancer therapies.”
Under the terms of their strategic affiliation, North Shore-LIJ and CSHL will continue as independent organizations governed by their respective boards of trustees. The institutions have appointed a committee with responsibility for oversight, staffing, and implementation of the affiliation that includes three representatives of CSHL. In addition to Dr. Stillman, the committee includes CSHL Director of Research David L. Spector, Ph.D.; CSHL Cancer Center Deputy Director David Tuveson, M.D., Ph.D.; and three representatives of North Shore-LIJ: Physician-in-Chief Lawrence G. Smith, M.D.; Kevin J. Tracey, M.D., president of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research; and Thomas McGinn, M.D., M.P.H., CEO and chair of medicine.
The affiliation with CSHL continues North Shore-LIJ’s recent efforts at treating cancer. Over the past two years, North Shore-LIJ has spent more than $175 million to open and expand cancer treatment centers throughout Long Island and New York City.
The health system recently consolidated all cancer services offered by North Shore University Hospital and LIJ Medical Center in a state-of-the-art 130,000-square-foot facility by completing an $84 million expansion of the Cancer Institute’s headquarters in Lake Success. The expanded facility includes space for ambulatory hematology/oncology, chemotherapy and radiation medicine, as well as surgical oncology and brain tumor services.
North Shore-LIJ is also building a new $34 million, 45,500-square-foot outpatient cancer center in Bay Shore, NY, and is pursuing other expansion projects on Long Island as well as in Westchester County, and the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
North Shore-LIJ handles more than 16,000 new cancer cases each year across the New York metro area, with patients having access to more than 200 physicians in over 25 sub-specialties.
