The CEO Roundtable on Cancer has presented the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and Pfizer with the 2015 Dr. Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Awards in recognition of their innovative and collaborative work on Project Data Sphere, an independent nonprofit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium.

“Pfizer is honored to receive this esteemed award,” said Dr. Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of clinical development and medical affairs and chief medical officer for Pfizer Oncology. “With initiatives like Project Data Sphere, I truly believe that we are at the threshold of an era of unprecedented collaboration that will help speed cancer drug discovery and development and bring new medicines to patients faster.”

The Project Data Sphere data sharing platform was launched in 2014, creating a novel library-laboratory for clinical trial research with the goal of advancing innovation in cancer research. In order to ensure that researchers can realize the full potential of clinical trial data, Project Data Sphere teamed with CEO Roundtable on Cancer member SAS, a provider of data and health analytics, to make state-of-the-art analytic tools freely available to all researchers within the Project Data Sphere environment.

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology received its award for demonstrating leadership that hastened the growth of the Project Data Sphere initiative by becoming the first National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) group to speedily provide data to the initiative. Pfizer was recognized for its integral role in establishing the Project Data Sphere initiative as a pioneering data provider and for its role in actively encouraging others to participate in the unique data sharing initiative. Previous winners include AstraZeneca and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2014, and Hogan Lovells, Sanofi and SAS Institute in 2013.

The “Charlie” award was created in honor of Sanders, the former chairman and CEO of Glaxo, who previously served as the chairman of Project HOPE and director general of Massachusetts General Hospital.