Cancer is an insidious disease. Even after surgery or aggressive systemic therapy, malignant cells often take refuge in hard-to-identify places in the body before emerging again to cause recurring illness.
For many years, researchers have been looking for more effective, less invasive ways to spot residual cancer cells after therapy to better gauge the impact of treatment and the likelihood of achieving or staying in remission for as long as possible.
Recently, a new generation of liquid biopsies has made this possible. By testing blood samples for tiny fragments of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) shed from malignant cells, researchers and clinicians can get additional insight into measures of residual disease in the body, providing a more accurate estimate of the risks of recurrence so they can plan their next steps accordingly.
Minimal residual disease (MRD) testing, for both solid and liquid tumors, has become so advanced that the FDA has recently started to accept liquid biopsy-based measures of MRD as a valid endpoint for accelerated approvals in multiple myeloma, a blood cancer with an overall five-year survival rate of around 60%.
As ctDNA tests and measurements of MRD become more mature and widely available, these datapoints are going to start to become more prevalent in electronic health records and other data sources that comprise real-world data (RWD). That will give researchers a chance to observe broader patterns in how malignant cells linger in cancer patients and provide important insights into improving best practices for treatment and follow-up.
Achieving this goal starts with collecting ctDNA/MRD datapoints and curating the information in a manner that supports meaningful research. Because usage of these tests is still limited, and the scientific community is still working on standardized definitions for interpreting results, it’s critical to ensure that stakeholders are working with data that meets the highest standards of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and reliability.
COTA has been working on this challenge since the beginning of the liquid biopsy era, applying our robust data curation methodology advances to collect ctDNA/MRD-related data elements in RWD sources to support research use cases.
Thanks to this deep experience in working with cutting-edge liquid biopsy data, COTA’s datasets are uniquely positioned to power future research as adoption of ctDNA/MRD strategies expands to new treatment settings and more diverse populations of cancer patients.
With access to RWD on ctDNA/MRD, researchers and pharmaceutical company partners can take the next steps into optimizing clinical trials, developing better treatments, and monitoring patients more effectively with minimally invasive blood tests that can be conducted in more types of settings.
The end result? A world in which ctDNA testing becomes a routine tool for monitoring disease status, guiding treatment decisions, and improving the experiences and outcomes of people living with difficult-to-treat cancers.
COTA is committed to working with partners across the clinical and life sciences communities to achieve this vision. By capturing the right data elements today, we can support the breakthroughs of tomorrow and create a brighter future for cancer patients.
