NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Takeda Pharmaceutical and healthcare informatics firm M2Gen announced today that they will work together to develop a research program that will enable cancer centers to quickly match patients to clinical trials based on genomic and other data.
Under its agreement with M2Gen, Takeda will help build the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) Avatar Research Program based on the Total Cancer Care Protocol. ORIEN is a partnership among top cancer institutions, such as Moffitt Cancer Center and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, which have agreed to leverage various data resources so that they can provide patients with precision care. These cancer centers can elect to join the Total Cancer Care Protocol within which patients agree to be followed over their lifetimes and donate tissue and longitudinal data.
The Avatar Research Program will collect de-identified genomic and clinical information from consenting patients treated at ORIEN cancer centers, including disease stage, demographics, and treatment history. This data may help oncologists direct patients to appropriate biomarker-driven clinical trials at ORIEN institutions, and to suitable Takeda studies to spur the development of better drugs.
"One of the biggest challenges in oncology research is identifying the right cohort of patients for enrollment into clinical trials," said Phil Rowlands, interim head of Takeda's oncology therapeutic area unit, in a statement. This latest agreement is based on a previous partnership between Takeda and M2Gen where they worked to identify patients for Phase II studies in gastric and pancreatic cancer.