The Max Foundation to Launch Treatment Access for Advanced Breast Cancer in Nine Countries Across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia in Q3 2023

• The Max Foundation to launch its Max Access Solutions program for patients with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer in collaboration with leading oncologists in LMICs and the ABC Global Alliance, the American Society for Clinical Pathology, Cepheid, and Novartis AG
• First patients to receive treatment in Bahamas, Benin, Bhutan, Haiti, Jamaica, Mozambique, Nepal, Saint Lucia and Seychelles with plans to expand to more countries in 2024
• Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women worldwide with 80% of patients in developing countries diagnosed at the metastatic stage; patients in these settings face delayed diagnosis and poor access to treatment and care

SEATTLE, June 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Max Foundation (Max), a global non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating health equity by delivering medication, technology, and supportive services to cancer patients, today announced the launch of its Max Access Solutions program to deliver access to treatment for HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer patients in collaboration with leading oncologists in low and middle-income countries. 

Initially covering 9 countries across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, areas of the world in most urgent need, The Max Foundation will actively continue to expand treatment access in low to-middle income countries (LMICs) with the focus on providing health care providers the tools necessary to improve outcomes for women living with advanced breast cancer. Max is working in collaboration with multiple partners to implement the program through its Humanitarian Partnership for Access to Cancer Treatment (Humanitarian PACT) for Advanced Breast Cancer.

"We are excited and humbled at the opportunity to help address the urgent needs of women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in low-resource countries at no cost to the patient," said Pat Garcia-Gonzalez, CEO of The Max Foundation. "There is a compelling unmet medical need and we are grateful to our partners who share our deep commitment to improving outcomes in the most common cancer impacting women in the low-income world. Expanding our focus to include advanced breast cancer strongly reflects our long-held mission to help those who no one else is helping."

Partners in the Humanitarian PACT for Advanced Breast Cancer have agreed to invest resources and/or their unique knowledge and capabilities to support the expansion of Max Access Solutions to provide access to treatment for HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer. Max Access Solutions is Max's innovative treatment access model that harnesses the power of partnerships and prioritizes individual patients' needs to improve outcomes for cancer in low-resource healthcare settings. Close to than 45,000 people have received access to treatment through Max Access Solutions, which now operates in over 70 low-resource countries.

"The ABC Global Alliance is happy and proud to be partnering with the Max Foundation in the Humanitarian Pact for Advanced Breast Cancer. We will be providing training and clinical/scientific advice to the leading oncologists in the selected countries, to help with technical implementation of this targeted treatment strategy for the most common breast cancer subtype. This program will improve the survival and quality of life of ABC patients, which are two of the goals of the ABC Global Charter¹ and in line with our vision and mission," said Fatima Cardoso, President of the ABC Global Alliance.

Participating physicians will initially have two Novartis medicines available, ribociclib (Kisqali®) and letrozole (Femara®) in combination, for post-menopausal women diagnosed with HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer. The Max Foundation continues to seek additional partners to expand the portfolio of breast cancer medicines available through the initiative.

Max and collaborating partners are investing in site readiness by providing knowledge transfer and training, as well as strengthening diagnostic capacity for some participating institutions. Patients enrolled in the program will receive the medication and support free of charge and be managed through the Max Foundation's patient access tracking system. The system is a real-time program management tool, developed in-house, accessed by The Max Foundation's team, and treating physicians. It enables the Max team to track each patient's treatment life cycle, including any changes to a patient's medication, dosage, or diagnostic needs.

Humanitarian Partnership for Access to Cancer Treatment

The Humanitarian Partnership for Access to Cancer Treatments (Humanitarian PACT) is a collaboration among professional, nonprofit, and commercial organizations that share the commitment of The Max Foundation to accelerate access to innovative medicines. Founding partners of the Humanitarian PACT for Advanced Breast Cancer include the ABC Global Alliance, the American Society for Clinical Pathology, Cepheid, and Novartis AG. Novartis is a member of the Humanitarian PACT through CancerPath to Care, an access partnership between Max and Novartis that provides innovative medicines free of charge to people living with certain cancers in more than 70 lower-income countries.

Breast Cancer in LMICS

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women with 25% of all cancers diagnosed in women being breast cancer. Approximately 2.2 million cases occur each year worldwide with about 700,00 deaths annually. An estimated 45% of newly diagnosed cases each year, and more than 55% of breast cancer-related deaths occur in LMICs. Managing breast cancer in low-resource countries poses unique challenges including access to screening and timely diagnosis, stage at presentation, adequacy of management, and availability of therapeutic interventions. For example, routine pathology, diagnostic exams, and standard breast cancer medicines are often unavailable. Breast cancer is usually diagnosed at late stages, and due to limited resources, patients with breast cancer may receive inadequate treatment including supportive and palliative care.

About The Max Foundation

The Max Foundation (Max) is a global health nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating health equity. For 26 years, Max has pioneered practical, scalable, high-quality solutions to bring lifesaving treatments and patient-centered health care to more than 100,000 people living with cancer and critical illness in low- and middle-income countries. Max believes in a world where all people can access high-impact medicines, where geography is not destiny, and where everyone can strive for health with dignity and with hope. Learn more at www.themaxfoundation.org

About the ABC Global Alliance

Established in 2016, the ABC Global Alliance originated as an initiative of the European School of Oncology and was registered as a non-profit association in Portugal in 2019. It is a multi-stakeholder platform for all those interested in collaborating on common projects relating to advanced breast cancer (ABC), aiming to improve and extend the lives of women and men living with ABC worldwide and to fight for a cure. It consists of more than 200 members across 93 countries. Learn more at: www.abcglobalalliance.org

¹ https://www.abcglobalalliance.org/abc-hub#global-charter

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SOURCE The Max Foundation