“Innovation” and “Collaboration” – two of the important descriptors in the ITN mission statement – apply not only to the selection and design of our clinical trials, but also to a broad set of principles for ITN operations. As we look at our work over the last few months, this combination of innovation and collaboration is prominently on display. Here are a few key examples:
- Rather than waiting for new concepts to be submitted, our transplantation assessment planning group identified a top priority approach to organ transplant tolerance needing thoughtful design, so the ITN distributed a targeted RFP to a broad section of the academic transplantation community. Fourteen very high quality proposals were sent to us, and we will now select the best elements of each, engage partners from the responding sites, and plan our next trials.
- A huge amount of work has been accomplished by our mechanistic data analysis team, culminating in the imminent launch of ITNTrialShare.org, our web portal for a data sharing system that will transform the way we talk to each other over data analysis, the way we engage our site investigators in the process, and our ability to quickly move from raw data to publication drafts.
- Internal communication needs are about to receive a big boost, with the selection of an exciting CTMS solution, and the commissioning of the ITN Members Portal website; after all, we need to enhance internal collaborations amongst ITN groups, not just with our external community partners.
- Dozens of biotech and pharma organizations have opened dialogues with the ITN in the first year since starting our targeted business development initiative, and prospects are excellent for moving several forward to highly novel trials.
Those are just a few highlights. Most remarkable is that this has been happening at the same time as we initiated a large number of new trials and continued successful enrollment and completion of others. Please pause and take a well-deserved moment to congratulate yourself and your team. Combining innovation with collaboration is critical to the success of our tolerance mission, helping us to engage the broader immunology community in our work and our goals.
Jerry Nepom, ITN Director