How does ORIEN Total Cancer Care help speed up the development of new cancer treatments?

Quickly finding patients for clinical trials is a challenge:

  • Only 8 out of 100 patients with cancer join a clinical trial
    (Unger JM et al., JNCI, 2019).

    Pie chart showing 8 percent representing the percent of cancer patients who join a clinical trial.

  • About 1 out of 5 clinical trials for cancer cannot be completed because not enough patients join (Bennette CS et al., JNCI, 2015).

    Graphic showing 1-out-of-5 circles highlighted and crossed out, representing 20% of clinical trials that cannot be completed because not enough patients join.

  • This means new treatments can’t be tested and made available to patients with cancer.

    Illustration of a clip board and test tube encircled and crossed out, indicating the new treatments that can't be tested.

Total Cancer Care® can meet this challenge by reducing the time to match patients to clinical trials.

Here's an example of how TCC helped speed up the testing of a possible new cancer treatment:

  • doctor-lightbulb
    A doctor conducting research at a cancer center needed to find patients who had pancreatic or stomach (gastric) cancer for a clinical trial studying a possible new treatment. These patients had to have a certain biomarker (a substance that is made by cancer, or by the body’s response to cancer).

The doctor conducting the research used the ORIEN shared research database to find these patients.

  • Image of the number one, indicating the first of three steps

    Patients join TCC

    crowd_1

    They donate their data and samples of their cancer cells, which are stored in a secure database.

  • Image of the number two, indicating the second of three steps

    Doctors conducting research search the database

    crowd_2

    They look for patients who have the cancer type and biomarkers that match their clinical trial.

  • Image of the number three, indicating the third of three steps

    Doctors conducting research invite the patients to join the clinical trial

    crowd_3

    The matching patients decide if they want to join.

In this example, the doctor conducting the research found enough patients to join the clinical trial in 6 months. That’s significantly faster than without TCC.