The CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Life Sciences Consortium has
initiated Project Data Sphere, a collaborative effort to create a
shared platform where clinical trials data will become available to
researchers for further studies that will speed cancer research. Project
Data Sphere is bringing life sciences organizations, health advocacy
groups, medical data standards organizations, contract research
companies, universities, and technology providers together to create a
data sharing environment that aims to honor patient participation in
research trials by using historic research findings to aid in developing
more effective therapies for future patients.
Christopher A. Viehbacher, chief executive officer of Sanofi, chairs the CEO
Roundtable on Cancer, a nonprofit organization of cancer-fighting
CEOs who established the CEO Cancer Gold Standard™
workplace accreditation program and that have been developing Project
Data Sphere during the past two years.
"Broadly sharing existing clinical trial data for the benefit of all
researchers can be a key driver in speeding up cancer research efforts,
encouraging innovation, and honoring those patients who have
participated in clinical trials as well as those future patients who
deserve our very best collective efforts in discovering new and better
therapies," said Viehbacher.
The scientific, academic and regulatory communities have long encouraged
the exchange of data for validation, however, these efforts have not led
to widespread data sharing between researchers. Significant challenges,
including patient privacy concerns, data security, international law and
corporate policies have stalled opportunities to learn more from
secondary analyses of data already collected. By employing advanced data
security and anonymization strategies and pooling multiple studies
associated with the same diagnosis, Project Data Sphere addresses
both the legal and technical issues associated with sharing these kinds
of data.
Dr. Charles Hugh-Jones, Vice President, Medical Affairs North America,
Sanofi Oncology, recently presented Project Data Sphere on behalf
of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer's Life Sciences Consortium at a
recent Institute of Medicine workshop on sharing clinical research data.
The development of this promising initiative which will be formally
launched in spring, 2013 was also recently highlighted in the weekly
journal, Science.
No one has ever doubted the benefits such sharing would bring. These
include ready-made comparisons of different treatment regimens, instant
creation of pseudo-experimental treatment and control groups to study
the impact of risk factors across studies, and an opportunity to use
multiple instances of small sample studies to develop a more valid
population estimate for epidemiological work. The leadership of the CEO
Roundtable on Cancer and its Member CEOs has made Project Data
Sphere a reality and in doing so will create new opportunities for
innovation and collaboration in drug discovery and new hope for cancer
patients.
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