Wow, another nice article. If you don't stop this Arch, you're going to burn the place down! lol I particularly liked this part:
The IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences Clinical Genomics Solution reflects IBM’s deep commitment to advancing healthcare and life sciences and leverages cutting-edge work by IBM Research as well as companies such as the Mayo Clinic and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute.
Information-based medicine is the use of IT to cross-reference clinical information -- such as patient records, family histories and lab tests -- with knowledge about the human genome. By understanding illnesses on the molecular level, including gene variations linked to disease or drug response, doctors may be able to make more precise diagnoses and tailor treatment decisions. Similarly, drug makers can work to develop more targeted treatment therapies and identify potential clinical trail participants more effectively.
Compare that text to this from the Moffitt Research Agreement announced last March. There seems to be tremendous overlap here:
Moffitt physicians and scientists are teaming with DNAPrint to identify genetic variants that underlie poor patient response to various chemotherapies, and to implement new clinical tests at the Center combining these variants with other biomarkers from gene-expression, proteomics and epidemiological research. The aim of the tests will be to predict patient chemotherapy response from the DNA before the commencement of the chemotherapy, so that patients with a genetic proclivity for poor or non-response can be spared from exposure to ineffective therapy. With the newly signed agreement, both organizations have teamed to make an important stride towards their goal of enabling a more personalized, safe and effective modality of cancer treatment for our current generation of cancer patients.
The program is multi-faceted and presently defines study in several cancer areas and clinical programs. Research will draw from several ongoing clinical trials and epidemiology research projects underway at the Center. A primary area of focus for the program is colorectal cancer, where DNAPrint will work with primary investigator Dr. Timothy Yeatman, Moffitt’s Associate Center Director for Clinical Investigations. DNAPrint will implement its proprietary ADMIXMAP genetic discovery platform to define gene sequences predictive for response to two anti-cancer treatments, XELOX and XELIRI. Though representing current FDA-approved therapies for metastatic colon cancer, approximately 50% of patients fail to respond and given the poor prognosis associated with non-response, there is a dire need for tools capable of predicting response before hand. The study design will aim to first discover and then evaluate the predictive power of predictive Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers in tandem with biomarkers from gene expression chip and proteomics research currently under way at Moffitt. The first colon cancer study will involve 100 patients. Other phases of this particular project will permit a retrospective alignment of genetic risk and epidemiologic factors, and prospective evaluation of chemotherapy response prediction in the setting of GLP and FDA approved clinical trial setting.
So from the meeting we know that we're going to be involved in 24 clinical trials at Moffitt starting in September? Hmmmmmmmmmm.......
Now, I wasn't able to attend the meeting. If some of you that were there would be so kind, could you confirm what was reported about the trials? I'd REALLY appreciate it, and would prefer to hear it from multiple sources if possible.
Thanks,
W2P
