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NCI Pediatric Preclinical In Vivo Testing (PIVOT) Program

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The Pediatric Preclinical in Vivo Testing (PIVOT) program is an NCI-supported public-private partnership to advance childhood cancer care by systematically testing new anti-cancer agents in preclinical models of pediatric tumors to identify agents most likely to show activity in clinical trials.

Mission and History

Info and Consultations

Learn more or request a consultation at preclinicalpivot.org.

The primary goal of NCI's PIVOT program is to develop high quality preclinical data that helps pediatric oncology researchers identify new agents that will show significant activity when clinically evaluated against selected childhood cancers. The program systematically evaluates novel agents against genomically-characterized in vivo models of childhood leukemia and solid tumors.

The PIVOT Program builds on two prior NCI initiatives: the Pediatric Preclinical Testing Program (PPTP; 2004-2014) and Pediatric Preclinical Testing Consortium (PPTC; 2015-2021). The PPTP and PPTC developed more than 370 patient-derived xenograph (PDX) models of high-risk childhood cancers and collaborated with more than 80 pharmaceutical companies to test novel agents in these models. The PPTC also published genomic profiling of these PDX models (Rokita et al., Cell Reports, 2019); this genomic data, along with decades of experience among the consortium institutions, allows the PIVOT Program to more reliably prioritize new agents and choose model systems for preclinical studies based on molecular targets.

Selected Publications

Molecular characterization data from PIVOT studies is shared via the NCI Cancer Research Data Commons in the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI) hub. Access to the data requires submitting a request through the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP) for each study accession of interest. Available studies include: 

The consortium has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles.  View all PIVOT/PPTC/PPTP Publications (PubMed)

Positive preclinical efficacy studies:

Program Structure

The NCI PIVOT program is a public-private partnership supported through NCI cooperative agreement grants to its Coordinating Center, and to the seven research institutions that perform the testing.

A graphic with the names and logos of PIVOT consortium member institutions. Long description available.

Program and regulatory oversight are provided by Dr. Beverly Teicher, Ph.D., of NCI DCTD's Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) Molecular Pharmacology Branch (MPB), and by Dr. Malcolm Smith, M.D., Ph.D., of NCI DCTD's Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) Clinical Investigations Branch (CIB).

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