Photo: Chordoma patient Dimitrios and his father Theodore visiting CF Labs this year
From encouraging clinical trial results, to breakthroughs in our lab, to record investments in chordoma research, this year brought remarkable advances on multiple fronts, leading to crucial turning points in our search for better treatments. As the year draws to a close, we are deeply grateful to the many patients, donors, and research partners who are making possible tangible, and increasingly rapid, progress against this disease.
Some of the key achievements we made together in 2024 include:
Three clinical trials we enabled yielded encouraging results, potentially opening the door to new treatment options for patients whose tumors progress after surgery and radiation, and demonstrating the tangible impact of investments in research. These include trials of pemetrexed, afatinib, and ERAS-601 + cetuximab.
Supported the launch of a new trial testing the combination of pemetrexed and pembrolizumab, which recently began enrolling.
Expanded our Clinical Trial Assistance Program to help overcome financial barriers to patients participating in any trial endorsed by our Medical Advisory Board and revamped our drug therapy list to make it easier to locate trials.
Generated rationale in CF Labs for several new therapeutic concepts, which we are now working to move into clinical trials, and received recognition for the lab’s research at the world’s main sarcoma conference.
Developed a suite of capabilities in CF Labs needed to enable development of drugs targeting TBXT (also known as brachyury, chordoma’s key vulnerability), dramatically increasing the feasibility for companies to invest in this important target.
Invested more than $2M in projects to expand the pipeline of new therapeutic opportunities for chordoma. Aims include: identifying new ways to exploit chordoma’s dependence on TBXT, identifying targets for treatments that are directed to molecules on the cell surface, and uncovering more personalized treatment strategies.
Together, these milestones create unprecedented opportunities for chordoma patients to benefit from more and better treatment options. To bring those opportunities to fruition, our top priorities in 2025 include:
Maximizing the efficacy of drugs that have recently shown activity in clinical trials by studying ways to predict which patients are most likely to benefit from these drugs, and systematically searching for drug combinations that can enhance or extend their effectiveness.
Initiating more clinical trials testing promising therapeutic concepts recently validated in CF Labs, and investing in infrastructure needed to increase the feasibility and speed of chordoma trials going forward.
Accelerating TBXT drug development by providing new financial incentives to companies and partnering with more of them to test emerging compounds in CF Labs.
Rapidly translating findings from recently funded grants including new therapeutic strategies, methods to combat therapy resistance, and opportunities to improve care through treatment personalization.
We thank everyone standing with us in our urgent mission and eagerly look forward to continuing to forge ahead together in the coming year.
If you have yet to contribute this year, we hope you’ll consider making a year-end gift so that no promising therapy goes unexplored and no opportunity is missed in our urgent quest for better treatments. Your support is deeply appreciated and is a great source of hope for many in our community.