National community oncology care network, OneOncology has formed a national non-exclusive clinical trial site management organization (SMO) designed to enhance current research programs underway at participating community oncology practices.
The OneOncology Research Network (OneR), a subsidiary of OneOncology, will provide operational, regulatory, and research support services with the aim of more efficiently executing multi-center clinical trials.
As a result, OneR reasons, it will be able to expand the access of community oncology practices to more innovative therapies for their patients.
OneR uses OneOncology’s technology platform, designed to promote collaboration throughout its network to manage clinical trials across all of its research sites. OneOncology’s network of community oncology practices represents more than 470 providers practicing at nearly 170 sites of care across the U.S.
OneR added that its efforts are designed to enhance a community practice’s ability to increase clinical trial participation, by centralizing business functions, regulatory submissions, and clinical trial matching technology, while also ensuring practices maintain their flexibility to participate in other clinical trial initiatives. As a non-exclusive SMO, practices are not limited to only participate in OneR clinical trial programs.
Additionally, OneR has committed to ensuring greater population diversity among cancer clinical trial participants—including by ethnicity, gender, geography, disease status, and socioeconomics.
“OneR is a community oncology network designed for and built by community oncology practices,” Lee Schwartzberg, M.D., CMO, OneOncology, said in a statement. Schwartzberg is also medical director, West Cancer Center, a Memphis, TN-based adult cancer care provider serving more than 40,000 individuals annually.
“Our north star is improving the lives of everyone with cancer which is fundamentally dependent on advancing the science of oncology treatments,” Schwartzberg said. “We look forward to working with practices and sponsors who want to expand diverse patient access to precision oncology and other high-quality cancer clinical trials through our portfolio of therapeutic and observational studies.”
OneR said it will offer access to precision oncology clinical trials across tumor types with innovative trial designs to oncology practices within its network. Trial designs include “basket” trials designed to test how well a new drug works in patients who have different types of cancer that all have the same mutation or biomarker. Umbrella trials treat patients with one specific cancer based on the molecular profile of that cancer.
“OneR will not only improve patient access to cutting-edge care, it will also help to advance scientific discovery,” added Axel Grothey, MD, Medical Director, OneR and Director, GI Cancer Research, West Cancer Center. “With too many of our patients disproportionately impacted by health disparities, we believe that by providing community oncology practices with enhanced operational efficiencies we can ensure that more patients will benefit from the groundbreaking clinical trials.”
OneR will be co-headquartered in Nashville, TN, as well as Memphis.
OneOncology launched in 2018, backed by $200 million from equity firm General Atlantic and participation of three founding oncology practices, with the intent of applying technology and economies of scale to help community cancer centers operate more efficiently across the continuum of care, and better navigate the challenges of new value-based reimbursement models.
In August, OneOncology launched a partnership with Foundation Medicine that is intended to help physicians unlock the potential of precision oncology through comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) and research. The value of that partnership was undisclosed.
