Welcome to the ORIEN NOVA Information Page

Award Overview

The Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) New Oncologic Visionary Awards (NOVA) program was designed to advance research by encouraging collaborative multidisciplinary team science across the ORIEN members, allowing researchers to share information and expertise to ultimately improve patient care. Each project through the ORIEN NOVA program brings together researchers from a variety of leading cancer centers across the country to address some of cancer’s toughest questions.

This year, three ORIEN Avatar NOVA grants totaling $2 million and four ORIEN Investigator Initiated Proposal (IIP) NOVA grants totaling $1 million were selected to receive funding over two years. Selected projects included those that demonstrated the potential for high-impact cancer research, as well as utilization of new data analytics and data acquisition tools. All research projects were reviewed, scored and chosen by a scientific review panel consisting of ORIEN scientists and external researchers from cancer centers across the country.

Participating ORIEN member institutions include:

For more, please contact: [email protected]..

ORIEN Foundation

The ORIEN Foundation was established to fund high-impact team science projects across ORIEN members that could change how cancer is treated and change lives. Donations to the ORIEN Foundation help foster and enable translational research. We firmly believe that collaboration is the key to answering cancer’s toughest questions and we are thrilled to support the innovative partnerships between ORIEN members, in order to accelerate research efforts and discovery.

If you are interested in supporting collaborative cancer research that enables rapid learning to bring new, improved treatments to patients around the country, make your donation to the ORIEN Foundation today. A donation can be made to the ORIEN Foundation through the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay website by clicking the link https://cftampabay.org/give_now/orien/.

Alternatively, a check can be mailed, made payable to the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, with instructions to add the contribution to the ORIEN Foundation. The mailing address is 4300 W. Cypress St., Ste. 700, Tampa FL 33607-4167.

Background

The Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN®) is a unique alliance created to encourage data sharing and collaborative learning to accelerate cancer research and care. ORIEN was founded by the Moffitt Cancer Center and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in May 2014 and now includes 19 members.

The foundation of the alliance is the common, IRB-approved, Total Cancer Care® (TCC) protocol, a longitudinal surveillance study of cancer patients, which allows for lifetime consent to access clinical data and perform laboratory analysis of specimens, while also providing the ability to re-contact the patient. Patients’ consent allows the ORIEN member institution to:

  1. Follow the patient throughout their lifetime- permitting sharing of data and information
  2. Study the patient’s specimens
  3. Recontact the patient for potential inclusion in clinical trials and follow-up information

ORIEN Avatar launched in 2016. The program generates next generation sequencing (NGS) molecular data on patients with high risk cancers and links longitudinal clinical data throughout a patient’s lifetime to learn from patients and anticipate a patient’s need for a clinical trial. With ORIEN Avatar, the pace of development can be accelerated by taking a proactive approach to study the molecular and clinical nature of a patient’s cancer and a proactive approach created to anticipating patient need. The results: reduced timelines, reduced costs and better outcomes for patients.

Through ORIEN, members collect and share clinical data and specimens for analysis and have access to robust molecular data to foster and enable translational research. M2Gen has developed a network data model system to integrate data from multiple sources and institutions to support team science and address complex problems. Centrally managed by M2Gen, the ORIEN system provides the ability to identify patients for target-based clinical trials, and to query the data system to conduct research projects.

ORIEN’s Patient Advisory Council supports the position that patients enrolled in the Total Cancer Care Protocol be informed of the necessity for data sharing and fostering collaboration among top scientists to promote progress in cancer care. The Patient Advisory Council also endorses the development of a “forum” for patient education and how their donated data is being studied to support cancer research. As a means of “giving back” to patients who have consented to TCC, enrollment of patients in the Total Cancer Care Protocol offers patients increased probability of being matched to the most appropriate and precise clinical trial.