Newly developed CancerLinQ Discovery translates Big Data into practical knowledge for cancer community
CancerLinQ, a nonprofit subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), today announced CancerLinQ Discovery, a groundbreaking offering that will provide insights through the analysis of real-world cancer care data. CancerLinQ Discovery will provide highly curated, de-identified sets of clinical data with the objective of creating new clinical knowledge and improving patient outcomes. It will derive these sets from the rapidly-growing CancerLinQ® database, which now includes over 1.5 million patient records and more than 70 oncology practices that have agreed to contribute data to CancerLinQ’s core quality improvement and data-sharing platform.
CancerLinQ also announced a new non-exclusive partnership with AstraZeneca, which will use CancerLinQ Discovery to gather insights on specific cancer care questions and provide critical input to maximize CancerLinQ Discovery’s utility and usability. In addition, CancerLinQ is pursuing collaborations with government agencies, medical specialty societies and additional life sciences companies. Through all these efforts, CancerLinQ hopes to gain insights that can improve quality and efficiency of the cancer care delivery system.
“As CancerLinQ itself scales up to help doctors assess and improve their care in everyday practice, CancerLinQ Discovery will leverage our collaboration to enable the entire care and research community to explore some of our most pressing treatment and scientific challenges,” said Clifford A. Hudis, MD, Chief Executive Officer of ASCO and Chair of the CancerLinQ board. “Contributing to our shared goal of improving clinical care, we recognize AstraZeneca for its commitment to accelerate that progress and unlock new insights through the CancerLinQ Discovery learning platform.”
CancerLinQ Discovery subscribers, which will include researchers, public health agencies and members of the life sciences industry, will submit requests for customized sets of anonymized and statistically de-identified real-world cancer care data that may help to better understand and answer pressing patient care questions. For example, insights gleaned from the data might generate new research hypotheses, help identify new uses for existing drugs, or unearth better ways to manage side effects.
“AstraZeneca is proud to collaborate with CancerLinQ on this unique learning platform and its enormous potential to advance oncology research, to identify challenges in current healthcare delivery and to improve cancer patient treatments and outcomes,” said Andrew Coop, VP, Medical Affairs, US Oncology, at AstraZeneca. “We aspire to eliminate cancer as a cause of death, and CancerLinQ Discovery’s real-world evidence will enable clinicians, physicians and others to gain insights that may lead to meaningful improvements in patient care.”
Data requests will be reviewed by the CancerLinQ Discovery Research & Publications Committee, comprised of CancerLinQ’s medical director; oncologists, including those from participating CancerLinQ practices; and patient advocates. The committee will review requests based on their potential to improve patient care.
CancerLinQ Discovery’s first partners will help ensure that the offering meets the needs of the broader cancer community. AstraZeneca is the Founding Enterprise Partner of CancerLinQ Discovery, and has signed onto a five-year engagement to use and provide important feedback to CancerLinQ Discovery.
“CancerLinQ is more than a technology platform. It’s a community that learns together and shares insights to advance the care of patients,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, Chief Executive Officer of CancerLinQ. “With CancerLinQ Discovery, we will truly begin to learn from all patients, not just the relatively small percentage of patients who participate in clinical trials.”
CancerLinQ is supported in part through the Conquer Cancer Foundation, whose generous donors have helped make the system possible. Major supporters include Amgen; Astellas; AstraZeneca; Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Cancer Treatment Centers of America; Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation; Genentech BioOncology; HELSINN; Janssen Oncology; Lilly; Novartis Oncology; Pfizer Oncology; Raj Mantena, RPh; Susan G. Komen; and Thomas G. Roberts, Jr., MD, and Susan M. DaSilva.
CancerLinQ and CancerLinQ Discovery™ are projects of CancerLinQ LLC. For more information on how to participate or partner with CancerLinQ, please visit CancerLinQ.org.