Challenges to Using Big Data in Cancer.

Big data in healthcare can enable unprecedented understanding of diseases and their treatment, particularly in oncology. These data may include electronic health records, medical imaging, genomic sequencing, payor records, and data from pharmaceutical research, wearables, and medical devices. The ability to combine datasets and use data across many analyses is critical to the successful use of big data and is a concern for those who generate and use the data. Interoperability and data quality continue to be major challenges when working with different healthcare datasets. Mapping terminology across datasets, missing and incorrect data, and varying data structures make combining data an onerous and largely manual undertaking. Data privacy is another concern addressed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Common Rule, and the General Data Protection Regulation. The use of big data is now included in the planning and activities of the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. The willingness of organizations to share data in a precompetitive fashion, agreements on data quality standards, and institution of universal and practical tenets on data privacy will be crucial to fully realizing the potential for big data in medicine.

Case Studies for Overcoming Challenges in Using Big Data in Cancer.

The analysis of big healthcare data has enormous potential as a tool for advancing oncology drug development and patient treatment, particularly in the context of precision medicine. However, there are challenges in organizing, sharing, integrating, and making these data readily accessible to the research community. This review presents five case studies illustrating various successful approaches to addressing such challenges. These efforts are CancerLinQ, the American Association for Cancer Research Project GENIE, Project Data Sphere, the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons, and the Veterans Health Administration Clinical Data Initiative. Critical factors in the development of these systems include attention to the use of robust pipelines for data aggregation, common data models, data deidentification to enable multiple uses, integration of data collection into physician workflows, terminology standardization and attention to interoperability, extensive quality assurance and quality control activity, incorporation of multiple data types, and understanding how data resources can be best applied. By describing some of the emerging resources, we hope to inspire consideration of the secondary use of such data at the earliest possible step to ensure the proper sharing of data in order to generate insights that advance the understanding and the treatment of cancer.

Minimal Residual Disease in Myeloma: Application for Clinical Care and New Drug Registration.

The development of novel agents has transformed the treatment paradigm for multiple myeloma, with minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity now achievable across the entire disease spectrum. Bone marrow-based technologies to assess MRD, including approaches using next-generation flow and next-generation sequencing, have provided real-time clinical tools for the sensitive detection and monitoring of MRD in patients with multiple myeloma. Complementary liquid biopsy-based assays are now quickly progressing with some, such as mass spectrometry methods, being very close to clinical use, while others utilizing nucleic acid-based technologies are still developing and will prove important to further our understanding of the biology of MRD. On the regulatory front, multiple retrospective individual patient and clinical trial level meta-analyses have already shown and will continue to assess the potential of MRD as a surrogate for patient outcome. Given all this progress, it is not surprising that a number of clinicians are now considering using MRD to inform real-world clinical care of patients across the spectrum from smoldering myeloma to relapsed refractory multiple myeloma, with each disease setting presenting key challenges and questions that will need to be addressed through clinical trials. The pace of advances in targeted and immune therapies in multiple myeloma is unprecedented, and novel MRD-driven biomarker strategies are essential to accelerate innovative clinical trials leading to regulatory approval of novel treatments and continued improvement in patient outcomes.

Opportunities and Challenges in Implementation of Multiparameter Single Cell Analysis Platforms for Clinical Translation.

The high-content interrogation of single cells with platforms optimized for the multiparameter characterization of cells in liquid and solid biopsy samples can enable characterization of heterogeneous populations of cells ex vivo. Doing so will advance the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancer and other diseases. However, it is important to understand the unique issues in resolving heterogeneity and variability at the single cell level before navigating the validation and regulatory requirements in order for these technologies to impact patient care. Since 2013, leading experts representing industry, academia, and government have been brought together as part of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Biomarkers Consortium to foster the potential of high-content data integration for clinical translation.

A QA Program for MRD Testing Demonstrates That Systematic Education Can Reduce Discordance Among Experienced Interpreters.

BACKGROUND: Minimal residual disease (MRD) in B lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) by flow cytometry is an established prognostic factor used to adjust treatment in most pediatric therapeutic protocols. MRD in B-ALL has been standardized by the Children's Oncology Group (COG) in North America, but not routine clinical labs. The Foundation for National Institutes of Health sought to harmonize MRD measurement among COG, oncology groups, academic, community and government, laboratories. METHODS: Listmode data from post-induction marrows were distributed from a reference lab to seven different clinical FCM labs with variable experience in B-ALL MRD. Labs were provided with the COG protocol. Files from 15 cases were distributed to the seven labs. Educational sessions were implemented, and 10 more listmode file cases analyzed. RESULTS: Among 105 initial challenges, the overall discordance rate was 26%. In the final round, performance improved considerably; out of 70 challenges, there were five false positives and one false negative (9% discordance), and no quantitative discordance. Four of six deviations occurred in a single lab. Three samples with hematogones were still misclassified as MRD. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the provision of the COG standardized analysis protocol, even experienced laboratories require an educational component for B-ALL MRD analysis by FCM. Recognition of hematogones remains challenging for some labs when using the COG protocol. The results from this study suggest that dissemination of MRD testing to other North American laboratories as part of routine clinical management of B-ALL is possible but requires additional educational components to complement standardized methodology. © 2017 International Clinical Cytometry Society.

The Role of Minimal Residual Disease Testing in Myeloma Treatment Selection and Drug Development: Current Value and Future Applications.

Treatment of myeloma has benefited from the introduction of more effective and better tolerated agents, improvements in supportive care, better understanding of disease biology, revision of diagnostic criteria, and new sensitive and specific tools for disease prognostication and management. Assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) in response to therapy is one of these tools, as longer progression-free survival (PFS) is seen consistently among patients who have achieved MRD negativity. Current therapies lead to unprecedented frequency and depth of response, and next-generation flow and sequencing methods to measure MRD in bone marrow are in use and being developed with sensitivities in the range of 10-5 to 10-6 cells. These technologies may be combined with functional imaging to detect MRD outside of bone marrow. Moreover, immune profiling methods are being developed to better understand the immune environment in myeloma and response to immunomodulatory agents while methods for molecular profiling of myeloma cells and circulating DNA in blood are also emerging. With the continued development and standardization of these methodologies, MRD has high potential for use in gaining new drug approvals in myeloma. The FDA has outlined two pathways by which MRD could be qualified as a surrogate endpoint for clinical studies directed at obtaining accelerated approval for new myeloma drugs. Most importantly, better understanding of MRD should also contribute to better treatment monitoring. Potentially, MRD status could be used as a prognostic factor for making treatment decisions and for informing timing of therapeutic interventions. Clin Cancer Res; 23(15); 3980-93. ©2017 AACR.

Biomarker development in the context of urologic cancers.

BACKGROUND: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called for the use of analytically validated biomarkers that have strong evidence of being fit for purpose to identify patients likely to respond and to evaluate the patient response to a therapy, potential toxicity, and drug resistance. This article discusses development and application of these biomarkers in the context of urologic cancers-specifically in cancers of the prostate and urinary bladder. METHODS: The FDA has defined four specific categories for contexts of biomarker use: prognostic, predictive, response-indicator, and efficacy-response (surrogate endpoints). Prognostic and predictive biomarkers include pretreatment characteristics of the patient and the tumor. Response-indicator and efficacy response biomarkers occur after treatment and show the effects of treatment on biomarkers. Efficacy response biomarkers show changes associated with clinical benefit and can be surrogates for clinical endpoints leading to drug approvals. RESULTS: Well-structured development plans are required to satisfy rigorous criteria that must be met to qualify biomarkers for specific contexts of use in drug development and patient management. A description of the extensive effort applied to the validation and qualification of circulating tumor cells in castration resistant prostate cancer is described as an example of the potential utility of biomarkers in urological cancers. CONCLUSIONS: Many potential biomarkers have been identified in prostate and urinary bladder cancers, but few have sufficient demonstration of analytical and clinical validity to meet FDA standards for use in clinical settings. Circulating tumor cell (CTC) assays are particularly promising candidates for informative new biomarkers to measure disease before and after treatment. New technologies are providing opportunities for high definition, more informative analysis. Statistical and computational methodologies to describe assay results are also rapidly evolving. These advances will lead to better diagnosis, earlier indications of treatment response and failure, and better definition of patient cohorts that will respond to a specific treatment.

Lung Master Protocol (Lung-MAP)-A Biomarker-Driven Protocol for Accelerating Development of Therapies for Squamous Cell Lung Cancer: SWOG S1400.

The Lung Master Protocol (Lung-MAP, S1400) is a groundbreaking clinical trial designed to advance the efficient development of targeted therapies for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the lung. There are no approved targeted therapies specific to advanced lung SCC, although The Cancer Genome Atlas project and similar studies have detected a significant number of somatic gene mutations/amplifications in lung SCC, some of which are targetable by investigational agents. However, the frequency of these changes is low (5%-20%), making recruitment and study conduct challenging in the traditional clinical trial setting. Here, we describe our approach to development of a biomarker-driven phase II/II multisubstudy "Master Protocol," using a common platform (next-generation DNA sequencing) to identify actionable molecular abnormalities, followed by randomization to the relevant targeted therapy versus standard of care.

Evidence of clinical utility: an unmet need in molecular diagnostics for patients with cancer.

This article defines and describes best practices for the academic and business community to generate evidence of clinical utility for cancer molecular diagnostic assays. Beyond analytical and clinical validation, successful demonstration of clinical utility involves developing sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a diagnostic test results in an improvement in patient outcomes. This discussion is complementary to theoretical frameworks described in previously published guidance and literature reports by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Institute of Medicine, and Center for Medical Technology Policy, among others. These reports are comprehensive and specifically clarify appropriate clinical use, adoption, and payer reimbursement for assay manufacturers, as well as Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments-certified laboratories, including those that develop assays (laboratory developed tests). Practical criteria and steps for establishing clinical utility are crucial to subsequent decisions for reimbursement without which high-performing molecular diagnostics will have limited availability to patients with cancer and fail to translate scientific advances into high-quality and cost-effective cancer care. See all articles in this CCR Focus section, "The Precision Medicine Conundrum: Approaches to Companion Diagnostic Co-development."

Considerations in the development of circulating tumor cell technology for clinical use.

This manuscript summarizes current thinking on the value and promise of evolving circulating tumor cell (CTC) technologies for cancer patient diagnosis, prognosis, and response to therapy, as well as accelerating oncologic drug development. Moving forward requires the application of the classic steps in biomarker development-analytical and clinical validation and clinical qualification for specific contexts of use. To that end, this review describes methods for interactive comparisons of proprietary new technologies, clinical trial designs, a clinical validation qualification strategy, and an approach for effectively carrying out this work through a public-private partnership that includes test developers, drug developers, clinical trialists, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the US National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Cancer biomarkers: selecting the right drug for the right patient.

This Perspective highlights biomarkers that are expressed as a consequence of cancer development and progression. We focus on those biomarkers that are most relevant for identifying patients who are likely to respond to a given therapy, as well as those biomarkers that are most effective for measuring patient response to therapy. These two measures are necessary for selecting the right drug for the right patient, regardless of whether the setting is in drug development or in the post-approval use of the drug for patients with cancer. We also discuss the innovative designs of clinical trials and methodologies that are used to validate and qualify biomarkers for use in specific contexts. Furthermore, we look ahead to the promises and challenges in the field of cancer biomarkers.

Regulatory approval of cancer risk-reducing (chemopreventive) drugs: moving what we have learned into the clinic.

This article endeavors to clarify the current requirements and status of regulatory approval for chemoprevention (risk reduction) drugs and discusses possible improvements to the regulatory pathway for chemoprevention. Covering a wide range of topics in as much depth as space allows, this report is written in a style to facilitate the understanding of nonscientists and to serve as a framework for informing the directions of experts engaged more deeply with this issue. Key topics we cover here are as follows: a history of definitive cancer chemoprevention trials and their influence on the evolution of regulatory assessments; a brief review of the long-standing success of pharmacologic risk reduction of cardiovascular diseases and its relevance to approval for cancer risk reduction drugs; the use and limitations of biomarkers for developing and the approval of cancer risk reduction drugs; the identification of individuals at a high(er) risk for cancer and who are appropriate candidates for risk reduction drugs; business models that should incentivize pharmaceutical industry investment in cancer risk reduction; a summary of scientific and institutional barriers to development of cancer risk reduction drugs; and a summary of major recommendations that should help facilitate the pathway to regulatory approval for pharmacologic cancer risk reduction drugs.

A perspective on challenges and issues in biomarker development and drug and biomarker codevelopment.

A workshop sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the US Food and Drug Administration addressed past lessons learned and ongoing challenges faced in biomarker development and drug and biomarker codevelopment. Participants agreed that critical decision points in the product life cycle depend on the level of understanding of the biology of the target and its interaction with the drug, the preanalytical and analytical factors affecting biomarker assay performance, and the clinical disease process. The more known about the biology and the greater the strength of association between an analytical signal and clinical result, the more efficient and less risky the development process will be. Rapid entry into clinical practice will only be achieved by using a rigorous scientific approach, including careful specimen collection and standardized and quality-controlled data collection. Early interaction with appropriate regulatory bodies will ensure studies are appropriately designed and biomarker test performance is well characterized.

The mammalian target of rapamycin pathway as a potential target for cancer chemoprevention.

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a key signaling node coordinating cell cycle progression and cell growth in response to genetic, epigenetic, and environmental conditions. Pathways involved in mTOR signaling are dysregulated in precancerous human tissues. These findings, together with the intriguing possibility that mTOR suppression may be associated with antitumor actions of caloric restriction, suggest that mTOR signaling may be an important target for chemopreventive drugs.

Workshop on imaging science development for cancer prevention and preemption.

The concept of intraepithelial neoplasm (IEN) as a near-obligate precursor of cancers has generated opportunities to examine drug or device intervention strategies that may reverse or retard the sometimes lengthy process of carcinogenesis. Chemopreventive agents with high therapeutic indices, well-monitored for efficacy and safety, are greatly needed, as is development of less invasive or minimally disruptive visualization and assessment methods to safely screen nominally healthy but at-risk patients, often for extended periods of time and at repeated intervals. Imaging devices, alone or in combination with anticancer drugs, may also provide novel interventions to treat or prevent precancer.

Assessing intraepithelial neoplasia and drug safety in cancer-preventive drug development.

Despite significant interest from the research community and the population in general, drug approvals for cancer prevention and/or cancer risk reduction are few. This is due, in part, to the requirement that new cancer-preventive drugs must first be shown to be efficacious in reducing cancer incidence or mortality. Moreover, such drugs need to have proven safety for long-term administration. This process can be improved by focusing on precancer (intraepithelial neoplasia) to identify subjects at risk and prove efficacy in shorter, smaller trials as well as on detecting early markers of potential toxicities of chronic exposure to cancer-preventive drug regimens.

FDG-PET lymphoma demonstration project invitational workshop.

The proceedings of a workshop focusing on a project to evaluate the use of fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) as a tool to measure treatment response in non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) are described. Sponsored by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health, and the National Cancer Institute, and attended by representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and scientists and clinical researchers from academia and the pharmaceutical and medical imaging industries, the workshop reviewed the etiology and current standards of care for NHL and proposed the development of a clinical trial to validate FDG-PET imaging techniques as a predictive biomarker for cancer therapy response. As organized under the auspices of the Oncology Biomarker Qualification Initiative, the three federal health agencies and their private sector and nonprofit/advocacy group partners believe that FDG-PET not only demonstrates the potential to be used for the diagnosis and staging of many cancers but in particular can provide an early indication of therapeutic response that is well correlated with clinical outcomes for chemotherapy for this common form of lymphoma. The development of standardized criteria for FDG-PET imaging and establishment of procedures for transmission, storage, quality assurance, and analysis of PET images afforded by this demonstration project could streamline clinical trials of new treatments for more intractable forms of lymphoma and other cancers and, hence, accelerate new drug approvals.

Imaging and oncologic drug development.

For decades anatomic imaging with computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging has facilitated drug development in medical oncology by providing quantifiable and objective evidence of response to cancer therapy. In recent years metabolic imaging with [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography has added an important component to the oncologist's armamentarium for earlier detection of response that is now widely used and appreciated. These modalities along with ultrasound and optical imaging (bioluminescence, fluorescence, near-infrared imaging, multispectral imaging) have become used increasingly in preclinical studies in animal models to document the effects of genetic alterations on cancer progression or metastases, the detection of minimal residual disease, and response to various therapeutics including radiation, chemotherapy, or biologic agents. The field of molecular imaging offers potential to deliver a variety of probes that can image noninvasively drug targets, drug distribution, cancer gene expression, cell surface receptor or oncoprotein levels, and biomarker predictors of prognosis, therapeutic response, or failure. Some applications are best suited to accelerate preclinical anticancer drug development, whereas other technologies may be directly transferable to the clinic. Efforts are underway to apply noninvasive in vivo imaging to specific preclinical or clinical problems to accelerate progress in the field. Because resources are limited, and patient suffering from failed or ineffective therapy continues, a concerted effort is being made to address these issues. Many simultaneous activities involving academia; the pharmaceutical, device, and biotechnology industries; US Food and Drug Administration; National Cancer Institute; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and specialized networks sponsored by the National Institutes of Health are beginning to address these issues to develop consensus recommendations and progress in this important area.

Progress in chemoprevention drug development: the promise of molecular biomarkers for prevention of intraepithelial neoplasia and cancer--a plan to move forward.

This article reviews progress in chemopreventive drug development, especially data and concepts that are new since the 2002 AACR report on treatment and prevention of intraepithelial neoplasia. Molecular biomarker expressions involved in mechanisms of carcinogenesis and genetic progression models of intraepithelial neoplasia are discussed and analyzed for how they can inform mechanism-based, molecularly targeted drug development as well as risk stratification, cohort selection, and end-point selection for clinical trials. We outline the concept of augmenting the risk, mechanistic, and disease data from histopathologic intraepithelial neoplasia assessments with molecular biomarker data. Updates of work in 10 clinical target organ sites include new data on molecular progression, significant completed trials, new agents of interest, and promising directions for future clinical studies. This overview concludes with strategies for accelerating chemopreventive drug development, such as integrating the best science into chemopreventive strategies and regulatory policy, providing incentives for industry to accelerate preventive drugs, fostering multisector cooperation in sharing clinical samples and data, and creating public-private partnerships to foster new regulatory policies and public education.