In late 2016, CancerLinQ LLC, a nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, announced CancerLinQ Discovery™, a groundbreaking program that will provide insights through the analysis of real-world cancer care data. CancerLinQ Discovery will provide highly curated, de-identified sets of clinical data with the objective of creating new clinical knowledge and improving patient outcomes. It will derive these sets from the rapidly growing CancerLinQ^® database, which includes over 1.5 million patient records and 78 oncology practices that have agreed to contribute data to CancerLinQ’s core quality improvement and data-sharing platform.

CancerLinQ also announced a non-exclusive partnership with AstraZeneca as the Founding Enterprise Partner of CancerLinQ Discovery. Collaborations with government agencies, medical specialty societies, and additional life sciences companies are also underway. In addition to using CancerLinQ Discovery to gather insights on specific cancer care questions, CancerLinQ Discovery’s first partners will help ensure that the program meets the needs of the broader cancer community by providing critical input to maximize its utility and usability.

“As CancerLinQ itself scales up to help doctors assess and improve their care in everyday practice, CancerLinQ Discovery will leverage our collaboration to enable the entire care and research community to explore some of our most pressing treatment and scientific challenges,” said ASCO CEO Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, who chairs the CancerLinQ LLC Board of Governors. “Contributing to our shared goal of improving clinical care, we recognize AstraZeneca for its commitment to accelerate that progress and unlock new insights through the CancerLinQ Discovery learning platform.”

To answer pressing patient care questions, CancerLinQ Discovery subscribers will submit requests for customized sets of anonymized and statistically de-identified real-world cancer care data.  This data has the potential to generate new research hypotheses, identify new uses for existing drugs, or unearth better ways to manage side effects.

“AstraZeneca is proud to collaborate with CancerLinQ on this unique learning platform and its enormous potential to advance oncology research, to identify challenges in current healthcare delivery, and to improve cancer patient treatments and outcomes,” said Andrew Coop, AstraZeneca vice president of U.S. Medical Affairs, Oncology. “We aspire to eliminate cancer as a cause of death, and CancerLinQ Discovery’s real-world evidence will enable clinicians, physicians, and others to gain insights that may lead to meaningful improvements in patient care.”

Data requests will be reviewed based on their potential to improve care by the CancerLinQ Discovery Research & Publications Committee, comprised of CancerLinQ’s medical director, oncologists (including those from participating CancerLinQ practices), and patient advocates.

“CancerLinQ is more than a technology platform—it’s a community that learns together and shares insights to advance the care of patients,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, CancerLinQ LLC CEO. “With CancerLinQ Discovery, we will truly begin to learn from all patients, not just the relatively small percentage of patients who participate in clinical trials.”

CancerLinQ^® and CancerLinQ Discovery™ are projects of CancerLinQ LLC. Visit cancerlinq.org for more information on how to participate or partner with CancerLinQ.

CancerLinQ is supported in part by the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO.