Clinicians, investigators and cancer patients now have access to a new online search tool that provides more detailed information about clinical research trials available for cancer patients.
My Cancer Genome (MCG), a web-based cancer information tool developed by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators in 2011 and supported by GenomOncology, has launched a new clinical trial search tool that allows website visitors to search for cancer clinical trials based on disease, biomarker, phase and recruiting status.
Visitors also can preview the new My Cancer Genome homepage at beta.mycancergen-ome.org.
While the first version of MCG’s clinical trial search vehicle permitted searching by gene, the new version permits search by specific genetic variant or other biomarkers.
Trial documents are downloaded nightly from ClinicalTrials.gov and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Clinical Trials Reporting Program’s list of NCI-supported clinical trials. Trials then undergo automated and manual curation to ensure the highest quality data.
Manual curation, or the process of associating data with a specific clinical trial by a subject matter expert, is the gold standard for curating non-structured disease and biomarker data associated with cancer clinical trials.
MCG is currently the only tool that does this while also making the manually curated results publicly available.
Other types of data, such as trial phase and recruiting status, are structured in the trial documents and can be automatically curated for each clinical trial. The MCG search tool is designed specifically for cancer clinical trials with an interventional therapy and with biomarkers as part of eligibility requirements.
From the new My Cancer Genome Homepage, website visitors have two options to search curated clinical trials. The first is a free text search box on the homepage. The second is by clicking on the clinical trials button on the homepage that links to the clinical trial list page. The clinical trial list page displays a set of clinical trial “cards” that contain the title of the trial, the clinicaltrials.gov identification number, the phase of the trial and biomarkers and diseases associated with the trial.
Website visitors can select a set of filters on the left side of the page to choose a subset of clinical trials to display. These filters include recruiting status, phase, tumor types and biomarkers. The tumor types that can be selected are based on a customized disease terminology derived from the NCI thesaurus. Biomarker filters include both genes and specific genetic variants.
Each clinical trial card links to a specific clinical trial webpage that displays trial information including structured disease and biomarker eligibility criteria. In addition, the clinical trial document from ClinicalTrials.gov is displayed.
To develop the clinical trial search tool, the MCG team worked with development partner and content licensee GenomOncology.
Additional features and webpages for the next version of My Cancer Genome will continue to be rolled out in a series of releases as the next phase of the website is completed.
GenomOncology (www.genomoncology.com) is a leading precision oncology platform powered by a proprietary knowledge management system that enables clinical decision support, virtual molecular tumor boards, clinical trial matching and advanced analytics.
