Abbott Laboratories spin-off AbbVie Inc. has become one of only a handful of pharmaceutical companies to join a nationwide network sharing data about cutting-edge cancer treatments.
A creation of M2Gen, a Tampa-based health care technology enterprise, the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) partners with more than a dozen cancer hospitals and four pharmaceutical developers to track information from experimental tests before the drugs receive Food and Drug Administration approval.
The data on some 20 types of cancer are gathered voluntarily from more than 150,000 patients participating in U.S. clinical trials, according to a March 28 announcement from M2Gen and Chicago-based AbbVie.
Officials from the two companies pegged the collaboration as a win-win for cancer sufferers.
“This program offers the opportunity to make great strides in how we treat cancer,” Dr. William Dalton, M2Gen’s founder and CEO, said in the joint press release.
Steve Davidson, AbbVie’s vice president of oncology discovery, said joining ORIEN would help pinpoint research on various types of tumors.
“Through the collaborative efforts of the ORIEN Avatar participants, we can magnify the collective data on specific tumor types and biomarkers to catalyze future discoveries for patients in need,” he said.
Through a staff of nearly 30,000 people, AbbVie has focused on manufacturing medicine after it was spun off from medical device maker Abbott Labs in 2013, according to its website. M2Gen states on its website that it launched in 2006 with the goal of conducting long-term studies of cancer patients’ progress.
