[November 09, 2016]

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Receives the CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Dr. Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Award

The CEO Roundtable on Cancer presented the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with the 2016 Dr. Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Award in recognition of their innovative and collaborative work in the CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Life Sciences Consortium.

"We are honored to receive this recognition. Cancer is the disease feared most by many Americans and our nation cannot achieve a Culture of Health without doing all we can to prevent, detect and provide access to quality affordable treatment to all who need it," said Dr. James Marks, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who accepted the award.

"Cancer is a vexing and complex health challenge and the CEO Roundtable on Cancer is fortunate to have partners like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help develop innovative approaches to both cancer prevention and research," said Robert A. Bradway, CEO and Chairman of Amgen and Chairman of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has helped support and shape the CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent, not-for-profit initiative. The Project Data Sphere® data sharing platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) is a novel library-laboratory for cancer clinical trial research. Strengthening the link between an increased amount of available patient level data and research with direct health improvement outcomes, for patients and broader communities, is aligned with the Foundation's Culture of Health vision.

"The Charlie" award was created in honor of Dr. Sanders, former chairman and CEO of Glaxo Inc., who previously served as the Chairman of Project HOPE and director general of Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sanders has been a driving force behind the innovation leading to improved drug development and has helped chart the course for health education and medical research in th United States and around the globe.

The Charlie Award was presented at the annual meeting of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, held in Cary, NC, on November 4, 2016. During the meeting, attendees received updates on the CEO Cancer Gold Standard™, the organization's workplace wellness designation which now covers more than 5 million lives worldwide, including in China, where an international subsidiary, CEO Roundtable on Cancer-China, was registered as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in 2015. The organization's Members also received additional updates on the progress of the independent Project Data Sphere initiative. More than 32,000 patient lives of data from more than 60 Phase III cancer clinical trials now reside in the database which has been accessed over 4,000 times by more than 1,400 registered researchers.

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 fight cancer in the workplace. The Life Sciences Consortium (LSC) 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 that will 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 "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 visit www.CEORoundtableOnCancer.org.

About the Project Data Sphere® Initiative

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). Launched in April 2014 PDS provides one place where the cancer community can broadly share, integrate, analyze and discuss historical patient-level comparator arm data sets (historical patient-level cancer phase III) from multiple providers, with the goal of advancing research. With its broad-access approach, the initiative brings diverse minds and technology together to help unleash the full potential of existing clinical trial data and speed innovation by generating collective insights that may lead to improved trial design, disease modeling and beyond. The platform currently contains 32,000 patient lives of data. In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of this data, PDS teamed with CEO Roundtable on Cancer Member, SAS (News - Alert) Institute Inc. SAS, a leader in data and health analytics, developed and hosts the site and provides free state-of-the-art analytic tools to authorized users within the Project Data Sphere environment.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161109005765/en/

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