PatientsLikeMe and M2Gen Announce Partnership

PatientsLikeMe® and M2Gen® have announced partnership 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 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.”