How We Work

The South Sound Care Foundation relies on partnerships with regional medical institutions; the work of doctors, researchers, nurses, and volunteers; and, most of all, the involvement of our community. The Foundation was founded in order to bring innovative treatments and clinical trials to the South Sound and the surrounding region so that we could continue pushing down the path to a cure.

How Our Trials Work

 

It’s no secret—the regulatory process to get medications and treatments approved by the FDA is a slow and expensive one. At the South Sound CARE Foundation, we tend to patients of the South Sound region with cutting-edge techniques and treatments that are in the process of being approved. These techniques and treatments have the potential to be more effective than previously approved standard therapy. These treatments have already been through a long and arduous process; they start in a lab, are often tested on animals, and finally, they make it to a point where trials on humans are deemed safe and necessary for further study. Due to this red tape, researchers may find out that a treatment is effective years before it’s approved.

*Clinical trials put this groundbreaking science to work on the human body. These trials do not guarantee success stories, they are not necessarily miracle cures. However, they do offer a glimmer of hope when other treatments fail or as supplements to traditional therapy. Not only that, but these trials have the potential to help not only the patient undergoing treatment but all future cancer patients. We continue to grow our understanding of cancer from these types of trials.

*At the South Sound Care Foundation, it is our policy not to fund overhead for research.

Genomic Research

 

The genomic clinical trial offers a perfect example of how we work—and how you can help. Genomic research provides an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize cancer treatment by using the patient’s unique genomics to find out which type of treatment may help them specifically. This allows us to focus on the fundamental lesson of genomics: that every cancer is different.

Currently, the South Sound CARE Foundation is partnering with All4Cure to help treat patients with cancer in the South Sound Region using their genomics. The core hypothesis tested by this study is that engaging researchers, clinicians, and patients in an online knowledge sharing platform will enable patients to better understand cancer, better inform treatment decisions made by oncologists, and accelerate cancer research.

The study works by taking leftover samples from patients with cancer (blood, bodily fluids and/or tissues collected for clinical purposes) and having them sent for various types of analyses. The results will be shared on the All4Cure website, which both the patients and oncologists can access in real time.

Compassionate Use

 

For a cancer patient who has exhausted all lines of traditional treatment and conventional trials, Compassionate Use is frequently their last resort. Compassionate Use are “trials” in which the FDA and pharmaceutical companies work together to bring a specific treatment to a patient—or a group of patients—which otherwise would not be available. The process of acquiring the medication for a Compassionate Use trial can be very tedious and is typically estimated at nearly 120 hours per Compassionate Use request.

The South Sound CARE Foundation’s newly implemented OneSource™ technology provides CARE Cancer Research Coordinators a method for consolidating their approach across geographic and regulatory boundaries. The solution provides a way for physicians and patients to explore and match to investigational products through the streamlined infrastructure which automates requests and tracks approvals, significantly reducing dedicated hours to 20-30 hours per request. This will dramatically increase the implementation of Compassionate Use efforts in the South Sound.

CARE is uniquely positioned to provide this new service in the community as the Foundation does not rely on revenue from research to provide access and care. Generous donor support allows for these Compassionate Use services—and the costs associated with them—to be provided free of charge to partner sites.