Clinical trial matching tool shortened time to consent by 55 days

Image credit – MatchMiner 

CANCER DIGEST – Oct. 15, 2022 – A clinical trial matching system shortens the time for matching cancer patients with targeted therapy trials by eight weeks, a new analysis shows.

With the growing number of advanced cancer therapies that target ever more specific genetic features of each patient’s tumors, the task of finding clinical trials for a given patient has become time consuming and complicated, so complicated that the time to match a patient and get their consent has now stretched into a months long process. That is time many cancer patients don’t have.

Simplifying and shortening the time for matching patients to appropriate clinical trials has been the goal of the Knowledge Systems Group of researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute led by Ethan Cerami, PhD, and Michael Hassett, MD, MPH.

The analysis of the Dana-Farber clinical trials matching system, called MatchMiner showed that the system shortened the time to consent of a patient to participate in a targeted therapy trial was by 55 days, a 22 percent improvement. The report was published in the journal npj Precision Oncology on Oct. 6, 2022.

“Profiling patient tumors for genomic alterations has become a widespread part of cancer care, especially as new drugs targeting those alterations go into clinical trials or are approved as cancer therapies,” says Tali Mazor, PhD, the co-lead author of the paper with Dana-Farber colleague Harry Klein, PhD. “The combination of this growing body of genomic data and increasing number of precision medicine trials has created a kind of disconnect: finding the right trial for each patient can be a difficult task. MatchMiner helps bridge that gap.”

The system helps oncologists and clinical researchers find potential matches between patients and targeted therapy trials based on the genetic profile of patients’ tumors.

In the new study, investigators analyzed enrollment data for precision medicine trials at Dana-Farber. They found 166 instances where MatchMiner was used to match patients to a clinical trial. They compared the time to consent for those patients to the time to consent for 353 patients matched to trials without using MatchMiner. The result was the match and consent process was shortened on average by 55 days using MatchMiner.

Unlike many other clinical trials matching systems designed for single institutions, MatchMiner is available for use by other institutions. MatchMiner is currently testing artificial intelligence based predictions to better identify patients who may soon need a new therapeutic option like a clinical trial.


Sources: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute press release