Northwell and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory extend affiliation
Hardik Patel, organoid facility manager at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, prepares a cancerous biopsy for testing. Credit: Howard Simmons
Northwell Health and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory extended their affiliation in perpetuity, deepening ties that may expedite patients' access to personalized cancer care and other novel treatments, the organizations said.
Northwell began an affiliation in 2015 with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a biomedical research hub in the Town of Oyster Bay that runs educational programs on cancer, neuroscience and quantitative biology. Northwell invested $150 million in the affiliation’s research during the first decade of the agreement and will sustain similar levels of contributions, according to Dr. Richard Barakat, physician-in-chief and executive director of the cancer institute at the New Hyde Park-based health system.
Another $15 million annually will come from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a nonprofit that gets about half its funding from federal grants and the rest from private contributions and endowments, president and CEO Bruce Stillman said.
The two organizations' operations will remain knit together in several ways: Northwell’s medical students and fellows train at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; its clinicians detail the common course of diseases to those researching them at CSHL; and laboratory executives sit on an advisory board overseeing cancer treatment at Northwell, the organizations said. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is one of about 70 research hubs designated — and funded — as a cancer center by the National Cancer Institute, the arm of the federal government responsible for cancer research and training.
There’s also a pipeline to get patients’ personal cases in front of scientists. Northwell sends tumor samples to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where the material is nurtured into three-dimensional live tissue models called organoids, Barakat said. Scientists can test various treatments on a given model and use the results to tailor the course of treatment to the patient it came from, he said.
“It's a very symbiotic relationship that ultimately will lead to improving the outcomes of cancer for so many diverse patients,” Barakat said. “This is a tremendous opportunity to bring state-of-the-art care and innovative cancer trials to so many different populations. The Northwell Cancer Institute oversees the care of more New Yorkers with cancer than anyone.”
The partnership gives scientific discoveries a better shot at maturing into medical treatments, Stillman said. Traditionally, he and his colleagues published their findings in papers and hoped readers would use their studies to design drugs, he said. Occasionally, scientists would try to nudge companies in that direction. He estimated that it took 20 years for a pharmaceutical company to formulate a drug for breast cancer based off information discovered at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the 1990s.
With the affiliation, breakthroughs can be shared with Northwell's research arm, the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, which has chemists equipped to formulate potential medications. If initial assessments are promising, Northwell can help organize clinical trials and solicit participants from its substantial patient base, the organizations said.
“Now we can be much more proactive,” Stillman said, adding that his team is positioned to “try to translate discoveries to the clinic to benefit patients, particularly the patients at Northwell. There's a whole infrastructure that has been set up to do that.”
So far, the affiliation has ushered three treatments toward the clinical trials: a drug designed to reduce the symptoms of COVID-19; treatment for cachexia, a condition where the muscle wastes away in people with advanced-stage cancer; and pancreatic cancer care, Stillman said. The state announced a $15 million grant last week that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will put toward the construction of a new facility to house research on pancreatic and related cancers.
The two organizations have also partnered with the venture capital firm, Autobahn Labs, to develop a drug that promotes the production of badly-needed red blood cells in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood and bone marrow disease, Stillman said.
Sarina Trangle covers affordability and cost of living issues and other business topics. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at amNewYork.
