The PIONEER Initiative: Precision Insights On N-of-1 Ex Vivo Effectiveness Research Based on Individual Tumor Ownership (Precision Oncology)

The PIONEER Initiative stands for Precision Insights On N-of-1 Ex vivo Effectiveness Research. The PIONEER Initiative is designed to provide access to functional precision medicine to any cancer patient with any tumor at any medical facility. Tumor tissue is saved at time of biopsy or surgery in multiple formats, including fresh and cryopreserved as a living biospecimen. SpeciCare assists with access to clinical records in order to provide information back to the patient and the patient's clinical care team. The biospecimen tumor tissue is stored in a bio-storage facility and can be shipped anywhere the patient and the clinical team require for further testing. Additionally, the cryopreservation of the biospecimen allows for decisions about testing to be made at a later date. It also facilitates participation in clinical trials. The ability to return research information from this repository back to the patient is the primary end point of the study. The secondary end point is the subjective assessment by the patient and his or her physician as to the potential benefit that this additional information provides over standard of care. Overall the goal of PIONEER is to enable best in class functional precision testing of a patient's tumor tissue to help guide optimal therapy (to date this type of analysis includes organoid drug screening approaches in addition to traditional genomic profiling).