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Janssen Joins MMRF Partners on Personalized Profiling Effort

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The pharmaceutical firm Janssen R&D has teamed up with the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation to help MMRF and its partners pursue their Personalized Medicine Initiative, part of which is a large clinical and molecular profiling study.

MMRF said today that Janssen has joined its pre-competitive consortium, a group of partners that support the PMI and its Clinical Outcomes in Multiple Myeloma to Personal Assessment of Genetic Profile, or CoMMpass, program. The PCC partners provide both scientific and financial support for the initiative.

The CoMMpass study is collecting clinical and molecular information on 1,000 patients over a five-year period. Investigators then will use these data to characterize the genetic subtypes of multiple myeloma based on the disease's responsiveness to specific treatments.

This information will be made available to academic and industry researchers worldwide through a publicly shared data system later this year, MMRF said.

CoMMpass currently has more than 50 active sites, and 300 patients have been screened so far.

MMRF said it hopes that the initiative leads not only to new, targeted therapeutics for multiple myeloma, but also for other cancers.

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