CARY, N.C. - Thursday, August 21st 2014 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Project Data Sphere, LLC has appointed Kald Abdallah, MD, PhD as Chief Project Data Sphere Officer, charging him with continuing the rapid development of www.ProjectDataSphere.org which is providing broad access to cancer research databases, enabling unprecedented research collaboration to solve complex scientific problems.

“Dr. Abdallah has a track record of helping align data contributors with the innovative approach to cancer research that the Project Data Sphere initiative represents and that cancer patients deserve,” said Christopher A. Viehbacher, President and CEO of Project Data Sphere, LLC and also Chair of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer and Chief Executive Officer of Sanofi.

Project Data Sphere, LLC, is an independent not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium. The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was established in 2001 with the mandate to bring bold and imaginative solutions to cancer care. The data sharing platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) was launched in April of this year, with the goal of advancing research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world. In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of the clinical trial data in the platform, Project Data Sphere, LLC teamed with CEO Roundtable on Cancer member SAS Institute Inc. (SAS), a leader in data and health analytics, to make state-of-the-art analytic tools available to registered users within the Project Data Sphere environment.

Abdallah most recently served as Vice President of North America for Medical Affairs at Sanofi, where he also volunteered to help lead key activities of the Project Data Sphere initiative. Abdallah’s efforts aided AstraZeneca, Bayer, Celgene, Janssen Research and Development, an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Pfizer, and Sanofi to become the pioneering partners in making clinical trial data available via the Project Data Sphere database. In his new role, Abdallah will continue working with these partners as well as other organizations, including the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (sponsored by the National Cancer Institute), Amgen, and Quintiles, that have expressed interest in providing additional cancer data sets.

Abdallah has served in executive oncology R&D roles in the pharmaceutical industry and in academic research settings for the past thirteen years. He joined Sanofi in 2011, having previously held positions in Bristol Myers Squibb and Sao Paulo University Medical School where he was devoted to cancer chemo- and immunotherapy drug development, most notably leading BMS’s global medical team in the development and launch of Ipilimumab (an immunotherapeutic drug selected by SCIENCE Magazine as Breakthrough of the Year – 2013). At Sao Paulo University Medical School, he held teaching and research positions before joining the pharmaceutical industry in 2005. Abdallah earned his MD and PhD degrees from Sao Paulo University Medical School and then matriculated at Harvard Medical School for his postdoctoral fellowship.

In the coming months, Abdallah will explore Project Data Sphere, LLC’s participation in a series of focused research challenges designed to draw on the diversity of expertise within the community to develop innovative solutions to challenging questions. The first of these planned challenges addresses prostate cancer and is in collaboration with the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Sage Bionetworks, The Dream Project, academic experts from the University of North Carolina and the companies mentioned above who have provided de-identified, patient-level data.

About the CEO Roundtable on Cancer

The CEO Roundtable on Cancer was founded in 2001, when former President George H.W. Bush challenged a group of executives to "do something bold and venturesome about cancer within your own corporate families." The CEOs responded by creating and encouraging the widespread adoption of the CEO Cancer Gold Standard™ which calls for organizations to evaluate their health benefits and workplace culture and take extensive, concrete actions in five key areas of health and wellness to address cancer in the workplace. The Life Sciences Consortium (LSC) (www.ceo-lsc.org) was formed by the CEO Roundtable on Cancer as a means of bringing together leading oncology pharmaceutical/ biotechnology companies to enable a transformation in research and development activities. Their aim is to deliver more effective oncology therapies to patients faster by collaborating on solving issues common to all cancer companies engaged in drug discovery and development that cannot be solved by any single company alone. An earlier outcome of the LSC was the creation of the Standard Terms of Agreement for Research Trial (START) clauses in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute. The creation of these “common language” contract templates aims to shorten the contract negotiation time prior to opening a clinical research trial. For more information, please visitwww.CEORoundtableOnCancer.org.

Project Data Sphere, LLC

Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent, not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), operates the Project Data Sphere platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) which provides one place where the research community can broadly share, integrate and analyze historical, patient-level cancer phase III comparator-arm data with the goal of advancing future research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world.

Contacts

Green Room Public Relations

Caren Begun, 856-424-2023

C: 201-396-8551

VP Media Relations

caren@greenroompr.com

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