So much of cancer care is about time. When a clinician diagnoses a patient with cancer – particularly advanced cancer — there’s no time to waste. Treatment decisions that give patients the best chance at extending and improving life must be made quickly. New, novel treatments have the potential to enhance patients’ lives, but without the information needed to match patients with those treatments, time can be lost. Clinicians need as much information about a patient’s cancer as soon as possible, yet too many are forced to make difficult treatment decisions without critical insights about the molecular drivers of their patient’s cancer.
Every person with a cancer diagnosis deserves access to genomic insights about the unique profile of their disease so that they – and their physician – can be armed for the essential first step in developing informed treatment strategies. However, approximately two out of three people with advanced cancer do not get the broad genomic insights about their cancer that can help them find the best treatment for their specific cancer. [1] And even for those that do have their genomes analyzed, not everyone will get insights that point to a treatment plan with options tailored to their disease. More options are needed. That’s where real-world data can play a role.
Real-world data allows us to identify patterns in clinical practice, specifically and importantly outside of the controlled environments of clinical trials. These data and patterns help fuel the cycle of research and analysis that produces insights to help improve clinical decision-making and, ultimately, lead to new targeted therapies and more options that benefit patients. At Foundation Medicine, where I serve as the senior director of data and insights delivery, we’re working with real-world data every day to help improve drug development research and clinical treatment decisions. How do we do this? We gather and harmonize genomic data collected through comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) done in the clinic as part of standard-of-care practices. CGP provides physicians with valuable insights today about their patient’s specific cancer. Brought together, these data can then be used in research to generate insights that can lead to better cancer care for tomorrow.
Genomic data alone can be a powerful tool but connecting it to clinical outcomes unlocks many other opportunities for insights. In partnership with Flatiron Health, we developed a world-class database of patient-level genomic and clinical data called the Clinico-Genomic Database (CGDB), which links our de-identified CGP data with Flatiron Health’s de-identified clinical data captured by electronic health records. This real-world database provides researchers with diverse data from more than 97,000 patients across all tumor types. The number of patients in this dataset grew by approximately 40% in 2021. Importantly, the CGDB is representative of a broader patient population receiving cancer care in the U.S. — opening endless possibilities for research that drives advancements in precision oncology.
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