Global Cancer Institute (GCI) multi-disciplinary tumor boards (MTBs) as an educational tool to improve guideline-based cancer clinical practice in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Successful Targeted Therapy of Refractory Pediatric ETV6-NTRK3 Fusion-Positive Secretory Breast Carcinoma

“…The Global Cancer Institute began organizing virtual multi-disciplinary tumor boards connecting oncology experts based in the United States and Western Europe with physicians from low- and middle-income countries in 2012 with the goal of improving cancer patient care in underserved populations worldwide. 28 While these tumor boards have typically focused on improving standard practice in the developing world, here we demonstrate how these boards can also lead to the implementation of investigational therapy with dramatic benefit. Through collaboration of three large U.S. academic centers including MSKCC, Johns Hopkins, and Mass General Hospital and the participation of LOXO Oncology, the US Food and Drug Administration, and The Professor Dr Obayedullah Ferdousi Foundation Cancer Hospital and Research Institute in Bangladesh, we were able to not only able to provide profound clinical benefit to a patient who had exhausted all available conventional therapies, but through her extraordinary response we were able to directly demonstrate that ETV6-NTRK3 is a oncogenic driver in secretory breast cancer.…”