Posted on December 17, 2021
Company poised to transform personalized drug development and clinical healthcare in 2022, following series of key pharma partnerships leveraging its leading genomics platform and global real-world data access network
Latest partnership, with the Colorado Center for Personalised Medicine, could prove pivotal for identifying gene-drugs conflicts in clinical practice
BC Platforms (BCP), a global leader in healthcare data management and analytics, today announced a new clinical collaboration with the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine (CCPM) and reported on its outstanding 2021 performance. Its new data partnership with the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine (CCPM) will support the clinical translation of its basic research, including the potential to ensure improved and more personalized drug compatibility for patients. During 2021, BCP has successfully delivered significantly expanded global real-world data (RWD) and platform access in order to support precision medicine-led healthcare research and development (R&D). Leveraging its Data Network and the flagship BC|INSIGHT platform, which curates and analyses data in a secure format to advance personalized healthcare research, BCP has conducted impactful and transformational initiatives in key areas such as lung cancer, COVID-19, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and several others.
As part of the CCPM partnership, BCP’s flagship platform BC|GENOME and its Pharmacogenomic logic module has been integrated into CCPM’s EPIC clinical system’s Molecular Results Module, including the use of consenting patient data. Such a direct data integration between BC|GENOME and the EPIC clinical systems allows the latter to notify providers of any gene-drug conflicts at their point of care. This potentially reduces clinical prescription-related and/or administrative errors through a pharmacogenetics-driven, personalized medicine approach.
The global footprint of the BC Platforms Data network has grown rapidly to now include RWD equivalent to approximately 25 million patient lives, including longitudinal clinical data in addition to 500k patients’ genetic data, across 14 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. It is well positioned for further expansion, as organisations continue to recognise the value of rapid access to expertly curated and carefully governed patient data.
Tero Silvola, CEO of BCP, said: “While 2021 has continued to be influenced by the debilitating coronavirus pandemic, it has highlighted the urgent need for data digitalisation across the healthcare ecosystem. There has been an unprecedented global sense of commitment towards improved secure data sharing within federated networks, which can support the faster generation of translatable, actionable research insights. Our latest international partnership, with the Colorado Center for Personalised Medicine, could prove pivotal for flagging gene-drugs conflicts in clinical practice.”
As part of its remit to accelerate R&D, earlier this year BCP announced that BC|INSIGHT would be used as part of the major UK-based “iDx-LUNG” consortium to improve early lung cancer detection in a clinical trial involving over 15,000 people, led by the University of Leeds and the Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Southampton, working together with other healthcare, diagnostics and informatics companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Oncimmune, and Inivata. The study could contribute to methods of earlier cancer detection, which could translate to saving patient lives – a true example of personalized medicine having an immediate impact on individual patients, as well as offering enterprise benefits for large healthcare systems.
2021 has also been a milestone year from the perspective of securing multiple Pharma partnerships, to enable RWD access and help power R&D across multiple therapeutic areas and right across the R&D continuum – from discovery to post market approval phase data needs. These partners include seven top tier pharmaceutical companies.
BCP will continue expanding its healthcare footprint through the continued signing of global strategic partnerships. This has developed alongside a growing interest to gain more diverse, global genomic data access with a special focus in Europe, Asia and Africa. To that end BCP has been delivering platform-based support to regional genomics services such as the African Institute of Everyone Genome (AiEG) biobank, as well as a new partnership with Artisan Biomed in Africa as part of its remit to promote access to precision medicine around the world.
In 2022, BCP also joined forces with Japan’s Riken research institution and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), in an international research effort to support development of a precision prediction model to identify those most at risk from COVID-19 and improve society’s resilience to the coronavirus pandemic. The research focused on developing precise disease stratification algorithms using information geometry and artificial intelligence to determine which people are at most risk of mortality and hospitalisation from COVID-19.
The secondary use of RWD has delivered many benefits: making healthcare more cost and time effective, expanding knowledge about disease and treatments, and supporting public health goals, such as detecting emerging pandemics. But the increasingly widespread use of healthcare data raises important ethical questions. One of BCP’s strategic partners, a US patient advocacy organization, Cure Duchenne – wanted to address some of these challenges by creating a participant-centric biobank able to integrate diverse data types in a single data warehouse. In 2021, CureDuchenne launched CureDuchenne Link™, the US’s first Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy data hub that directly connects data and biospecimens provided by the patient community with scientists and drug developers everywhere. Powered by BC|INSIGHT, it allows for automated ingestion and harmonization of clinical information and multiple data types including genomics and other omics data.
For its Healthcare clients, BCP has provided industry-leading interpretation services on genomics related insights, with 2021 being a significant year for the emergence of pharmacogenomics (PgX) in clinical practice. One of its major partnerships in this area is with Bumrungrad International Hospital, in Bangkok Thailand, one of the largest private hospitals in Southeast Asia and a world leader in healthcare delivery and pioneering clinical research. With the advances in genotyping technology and NGS, clinical laboratories are transitioning from single-gene tests to multi-gene panels for PGx, with SNV panel testing still being the most widely used technology. Without expertise from BCP, SNV data interpretation could otherwise prove challenging.
Nino da Silva, Deputy Managing Director, BCP, said: “2021 has seen us scale at pace our vision to build the world’s leading analytics platform for healthcare and the life sciences industry. We are keen to facilitate access to our easy-to-use integrated solutions such as BC|INSIGHT and BC|GENOME, to provide secure, actionable data – partnering on an international level to seamlessly connect genomics healthcare and research. We have successfully transitioned from serving a mainly clinical academic customer base to an equally strong Life Science industry customer base, having signed multiple partnerships with top tier pharma companies. We encourage health systems to invest in consenting and data infrastructure as it provides strong foundations underpinning personalised medicine and ultimately improve outcomes for patients. Through our latest partnership with the Colorado Center for Personalised Medicine, we expect patient lives will be directly and positively impacted through BC|GENOME.”