PatientsLikeMe and M2Gen Announce Partnership and Plans for Landmark Cancer Experience Study

March 08, 2016

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & TAMPA, Fla. — Patient network PatientsLikeMe® and informatics solutions provider M2Gen® are collaborating to give patients and researchers a more complete picture of patients’ experiences with cancer treatments and to shed new light on the factors that may affect outcomes and quality of life.

The partnership aims to advance cancer research by combining real-world, patient-reported outcomes shared by members of PatientsLikeMe with the molecular and clinical data shared by patients enrolled in the Total Cancer Care® program at the Moffitt Cancer Center and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center –

Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). The combined dataset will give researchers a broader, longitudinal view of the many factors that affect patient outcomes.

The collaboration’s initial study is expected to kick off within the next several months and to focus on lung cancer. Researchers will analyze and explore the typically distinct forms of data to generate new insights into the patient experience and value of treatment plans for those undergoing care. The study is funded by PatientsLikeMe partners AstraZeneca and Genentech, a member of the Roche Group.

“As we continue to expand our real-world measurement system, we want to ensure we’re giving patients access to all of the information needed to help guide their care decisions,“ said PatientsLikeMe CEO Martin Coulter. “By integrating data from multiple sources, we’ll be able to get, and give, a more comprehensive picture of disease and patients’ experience managing it.”

Moffitt Cancer Center and OSUCCC – James are founding members in the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN), a unique research partnership among the country’s top cancer centers. M2Gen guides ORIEN’s operations and strategy. Dr. William (Bill) S. Dalton, Founder and CEO of M2Gen, said the collaboration will help guide how cancer care evolves.

“This partnership brings together everything we need to better understand the patient, identify unmet needs, and use that insight to develop better technology, treatments and care protocols,” said Dalton. “We ultimately hope it provides the tools and information patients and their doctors will use to make treatment decisions that are tuned to patients’ life goals and treatment preferences.”

About PatientsLikeMe
PatientsLikeMeis a patient network that improves lives and a real-time research platform that advances medicine. Through the network, patients connect with others who have the same disease or condition and track and share their own experiences. In the process, they generate data about the real-world nature of disease that help researchers, pharmaceutical companies, regulators, providers, and nonprofits develop more effective products, services, and care. With more than 400,000 members, PatientsLikeMe is a trusted source for real-world disease information and a clinically robust resource that has published more than 70 research studies. Visit us at www.patientslikeme.com or follow us via our blog, Twitter or Facebook.

About M2Gen
M2Gen is Moffitt Cancer Center’s wholly owned, for-profit, informatics solution subsidiary advancing personalized medicine by using high quality tissue, clinical data and molecular technology to accelerate the discovery and delivery of personalized medicine. Using a rapid learning approach, the goal of M2Gen is to accelerate the science of precision medicine by creating evidence and knowledge-based solutions that identify a patient’s susceptibility to disease, predict how the patient will respond to a particular drug, and match patients to the best therapies for an optimal treatment outcome. M2Gen, along with Moffitt and partnering community hospitals, has created a large, cancer-focused biorepository linked to clinical and molecular data. For more information visit www.m2gen.com

About the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN)
The Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) is a unique research partnership among North America’s top cancer centers that recognize collaboration and access to data are the keys to cancer discovery. Through ORIEN, founders Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in Columbus leverage multiple data sources and match patients to targeted treatments. More information is at http://www.oriencancer.org/.

About the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute strives to create a cancer-free world by integrating scientific research with excellence in education and patient-centered care, a strategy that leads to better methods of prevention, detection and treatment. Ohio State is one of only 45 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of only four centers funded by the NCI to conduct both phase I and phase II clinical trials on novel anticancer drugs. As the cancer program’s 306-bed adult patient-care component, The James is one of the top cancer hospitals in the nation as ranked by U.S. News & World Report and has achieved Magnet designation, the highest honor an organization can receive for quality patient care and professional nursing practice. At 21 floors with more than 1.1 million square feet, The James is a transformational facility that fosters collaboration and integration of cancer research and clinical cancer care. For more information, visit www.cancer.osu.edu.

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