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For Release: March 4, 2004
Contact: DMS Communications(603) 650-1492
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Government, Policy, Industry Leaders to Discuss Research Partnership at Dartmouth
HANOVER, NH--Last week, the FDA approved Avastin, a cancer drug that starves tumors by preventing new blood vessels from growing. That's great news for cancer patients. But the fact that it took Avastin 33 years to move through the clinical trial and approval process is not so great.
That's the view of Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of the National Institutes for Health, who is leading efforts to speed the progress of research in the U.S. On Friday, March 5, Zerhouni will participate in a panel discussion with cancer patients, researchers, policymakers, and pharmaceutical representatives who will look at accelerating the movement of research from lab bench to patient bedside. The event, hosted by Norris Cotton Cancer Center, will be held at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon in Auditoria E-F at DHMC from 4-6 p.m. on March 5, 2004.
Joining Zerhouni will be Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, Director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Peter Corr, Senior Vice President for Science and Technology at Pfizer, Senator Judd Gregg, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Mark Israel, Director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Drs. Allen Dietrich and Nancy Speck, researchers at Norris Cotton Cancer Center, and Dr. Nancy Hellman, cancer survivor. The panel discussion will be moderated by Susan Dentzer, health correspondent for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Key to the discussion will be the NIH Roadmap, introduced by Zerhouni last year. The Roadmap is built around removing roadblocks to research, increasing interaction and integration among researchers, and re-engineering the clinical research environment. The Dartmouth medical and scientific enterprise, known for its high levels of collaboration and cross-disciplinary interaction, in many ways represents the model Zerhouni and his colleagues hope to replicate in institutions across the country.
In addition to responding to questions from the moderator, panelists will take questions from the audience. This event is jointly sponsored by Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the Friends of Cancer Research, and Research!America.
For more information, contact Deborah Kimbell at 603-653-1913 or deborah.kimbell@hitchcock.org
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