As we recognize Women’s Health Month and approach Mother’s Day, this is a chance to lead differently. We can ask better questions. We can design smarter trials. We can act on data that reflects real life, not just ideal scenarios.
One in eight women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. This year alone in the U.S., breast and gynecologic cancers – ovarian, uterine, cervical, and others – will account for more than 400,000 new cancer diagnoses and lead to over 75,000 deaths. Despite the significant disease burden and devastating impacts these conditions often have on patients and their loved ones, only four percent of global R&D funding focuses on women’s cancers. To save lives and improve treatment for women everywhere, we must have greater insight into what causes these cancers and how we can treat each patient with the precision necessary to improve outcomes and address gaps in care.
At COTA, we’re committed to improving women’s health by giving life science researchers and clinicians the tools to dive deep into the drivers of women’s cancers. With high-quality real-world data (RWD) that details the true impact of these conditions on all women – especially those who are currently underserved by the healthcare system and disproportionately feel cancer’s burden, such as Black women and women of lower socioeconomic status – we strive to close gaps in care that harm too many women today.
We’re particularly focused on improving understanding of ovarian cancer with our real-world dataset – a topic that C.K. Wang, COTA’s Chief Medical Officer, spoke more about in an article in The Cancer Letter. Studies have shown significant disparities in ovarian cancer outcomes between Black and white women, but researchers aren’t sure why these inequities exist. COTA has made a concerted effort to expand our database in ovarian cancer to begin to answer these important clinical questions and close care gaps.
Where clinical trials often take years to conclude and enroll participants who are less diverse, younger, and healthier than real-life patient populations, COTA’s RWD enables near-real time insights and more accurately represents the U.S. population. By detailing the evolving cancer journeys for patients of all races, ethnicities, genders, ages, and socioeconomic statuses, as well as those treated in both academic and community settings, our data can reveal how societal changes or updates to clinical practices impact treatment and outcomes for a diverse range of patients.
Today, the COTA database shows that Black women are more often diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancers than white women. About 77 percent of Black patients in our database were diagnosed with stage III or IV ovarian cancers, compared to 70 percent of white patients. With these insights as a baseline, we can dive deeper into the data to see what’s causing the disparities. Were there differences in the treatment Black women received, or in what setting they received it, compared to white women? Do some patients live further away from a cancer care facility than others, which may have impacted their ability to access timely care and catch cancer earlier? Our ovarian cancer database will allow us to explore these questions and many others, creating a richer understanding of where gaps in care exist and how we can address them.
The insights gleaned from analyzing deep RWD has proven to impact many cancer types and will have an impact on the future of ovarian cancer care and outcomes. Here are some actions:
- When treating ovarian cancer patients, oncologists can review trends in treatment and outcomes for patients like theirs to inform their own clinical decisions.
- Life sciences teams can use RWD to design more efficient clinical trials.
- A combination of RWD and artificial intelligence (AI) can reveal the right types of patients to enroll in studies – including individuals of all backgrounds, not just those traditionally involved in clinical trials.
Utilizing RWD to gain intel on how to best treat patients will not only ensure trial findings are applicable to broad populations of ovarian cancer patients, it will accelerate R&D to get treatments to patients faster and reduce the need for so many people to participate in trials in-person, potentially replacing placebo arms with RWD external control arms.
As we continue the work to improve cancer outcomes for women, we believe a high-quality source of ovarian cancer RWD will be a crucial tool for researchers, clinicians, and patients in need of reliable answers. We look forward to sharing additional insights in the weeks, months, and years to come that can help more patients thrive far beyond an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
