Combining Longitudinal Real-World Data and Clinical Genomics Data Will Enable a More Precise Approach to Cancer Care and Research
NEW YORK – COTA, Inc., an oncology real-world data and analytics company, today announced a new partnership with Genomic Testing Cooperative (GTC), a molecular testing company. The two companies are joining forces to integrate COTA’s deep clinical oncology real-world data with GTC’s comprehensive genomics testing data. This strategic and oncology-specific partnership, grounded in deep comprehensive clinical data, will support more precise, personalized cancer research particularly across early discovery and translational epidemiology functions.
“Integrating both DNA and RNA profiling in the management of patients with cancer has become essential in the proper practice of precision medicine,” said Maher Albitar, M.D., Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer at GTC. “We are proud to partner with COTA to streamline access to comprehensive DNA and RNA profiling, and to combine this data with real-world clinical and outcome data. Together, these highly valuable data sets will not only help advance scientific discovery, but will enable researchers to create predictive models that will allow for more personalized approaches to treatments for people facing cancer now and in the future.”
Genomic Testing Cooperative’s innovative approach to genetic testing provides valuable molecular information, which is critical for determining the correct patient diagnosis and selecting the most appropriate treatment. GTC tissue-based and liquid biopsy testing uniquely leverages DNA and RNA sequencing for both solid and hematologic cancers to generate information on mutations, chromosomal structural abnormalities, biomarkers that can replace or complement immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and standard tumor markers. This comprehensive profiling is captured before treatment and frequently after relapse so a fuller picture of treatment impact on a specific patient population can be understood.
“It’s no secret that up to 90 percent of clinical drug development fails despite the industry’s best efforts and ongoing innovation,” said Chris Boone, Ph.D., Vice President of HEOR at AbbVie. “The key to curbing this failure rate, driving down costs, and the ‘holy grail’ of a future grounded in precision medicine, is wholly dependent on our ability to access, integrate, and derive insights from multimodal data sets. Building these types of data platforms is hard, time and resource intensive work. But it is absolutely mission critical if we hope to accelerate personalized treatments and care for all patients.”
“Care teams and researchers simply can’t make the highest quality decisions for patients if they don’t have advanced oncology real-world data coupled with genomic testing data that fully reflects the patient journey,” said Miruna Sasu, President and CEO at COTA. “While COTA previously had access to clinically actionable biomarker data, it was not as complete as what GTC offers today. Our partnership will provide researchers and clinicians with the multi-modal data needed to conduct more targeted research and deliver personalized cancer treatments that result in the best possible outcomes for patients.”
This latest partnership builds on COTA’s recent announcement with the Clinical Research Data Sharing Alliance (CRDSA) and its broader focus on bringing clarity to cancer care. Last month, COTA joined CRDSA — a collection of biopharma companies, data sharing platforms, academic institutions, and service and technology partners — focused on ushering in the next generation of data-driven healthcare.
For more information about how COTA will be integrating GTC data and other clinical genomics data assets into their real-world data platform, please visit this page.
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About COTA, Inc.
Founded by oncologists, COTA is committed to creating a precise, patient-first approach to cancer care through the use of real-world data. The company leverages technology-supported human data abstraction methods to make sense of complex, fragmented patient data from the real world. Offering the highest quality oncology real-world data from leading academic and community-based cancer centers and an advanced analytics platform, COTA partners with leading life sciences companies, providers, and payers to ensure that everyone touched by cancer has a clear path to the right care. To learn more about COTA and how to fast-track improvements in cancer care and treatment with comprehensive and diverse real-world data and analytics, visit cotahealthcare.com.
About Genomic Testing Cooperative, LCA
Genomic Testing Cooperative (GTC) is a privately owned molecular testing company located in Irvine, California. The company operates based on a cooperative (co-op) business model. Members of the co-op hold type A shares with voting rights. The company offers its patron members a full suite of comprehensive genomic profiling based mainly on next generation sequencing. Molecular alterations are identified based on rigorous testing with the aid of specially developed algorithms to increase accuracy and efficiency. The clinical relevance of the detected alterations is pulled from numerous databases using internally developed software. Relevance of findings to diagnosis, prognosis, selecting therapy, and predicting outcome are reported to members. The co-op model allows GTC to make the testing and information platform available to members at a lower cost because of a lower overhead. For more information, please visit https://genomictestingcooperative.com/.
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