WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Canines-N-Kids Foundation is hosting the Paws for a Cure Research Symposium on November 12-13, 2018 at the Merck Research Laboratories in Boston to examine challenges and progress in accelerating cancer drug development for shared cancers that children and canines both get.
“Developing new cancer drugs for children has unique challenges and progress toward better medicines has been limited,” explained Ulrike Szalay, founder and executive director, Canines-N-Kids Foundation, a nonprofit committed to promoting research that integrates efforts for the benefit of both kids and dogs with cancer. “Our symposium is focused on propelling collaboration to find new drugs for these devastating cancers that affect our children and beloved pets.”
Thanks to significant support from title sponsor, the Petco Foundation, in partnership with the Blue Buffalo Foundation, the symposium will convene experts to discuss advancing research in pediatric cancer treatments, including how to use comparative approaches to make progress. The meeting will bring together pediatric oncologists, veterinary oncologists, translational research scientists in academia and in industry; pharma and biotech professionals in preclinical research, drug development, oncology and animal health; nonprofit and other funders.
Participants will hear from peers and experts about:
- The state of the art in comparative and novel translational cancer research.
- Ongoing preclinical, translational and clinical projects leveraging the canine patient model.
- The most promising prospects for future scientific exploration, collaboration and funding.
- Childhood cancer survivors and advocates’ life journeys.
The Paws for a Cure Research Symposium is important because both children and canine companions spontaneously develop a number of cancers with remarkable similarities. The challenges inherent in designing and implementing pediatric oncology clinical trials for limited number of children with cancer, coupled with scant resources for conducting research on pediatric cancers, makes finding cures difficult for the roughly 16,000 children diagnosed in the US each year.
In addition, little pharmaceutical industry funding goes to pediatric cancer research. As a result, only four new medications have been approved for the treatment of pediatric cancer in the last 30 years. For the 6 million dogs diagnosed with cancer in the US each year, the outlook is no better. The integration of drug development in pediatric and pet populations has great potential to accelerate the discovery of novel, more effective, less toxic treatments for the cancers that plague children and dogs.
The Symposium, also backed by the American Cancer Society, the Rally Foundation (pediatric cancer), Boehringer Ingleheim Animal Health and Applied Biomath, costs $949 for industry and $699 for academic/nonprofit attendees. Registration information, as well as featured speakers and topics can be found at http://www.pawsforacuresymposium.com/.
