AstraZeneca is investing £11.5 million in a five-year pact with the University of Manchester that aims use clinical bioinformatics to deliver more personalised care for patients with cancer.
A team of researchers within the Centre for Cancer Biomarker Sciences at the Manchester Cancer Research Centre is hoping to develop a new bioinformatics system that captures and integrates clinical trial safety, efficacy, biomarker and drug distribution data in real time, and is able to present the information ways that can be easily interpreted by clinicians to help tailor treatment.
The alliance will also support new training programmes in clinical research and pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modelling to help investigators better understand the distribution and clinical effects of medicines within the body, the partners said.
“This collaboration is exciting because it will eventually allow us to incorporate important data from clinical trials into a format that can be reviewed in real time by healthcare professionals and matched with information about cancer medicines,” noted Mene Pangalos, who heads up Innovative Medicines & Early Development at AZ.
“We will be able to modify clinical trial programmes accordingly and support clinicians to offer more accurate, personalised and rapid decision making to patients about their treatment,” he said.
The research will be carried out in partnership with the clinical trials unit of The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.
