Flatiron Health® announced a partnership with Japan’s National Cancer Center Hospital East (NCCHE) to build a real-world database of patients with gastro-intestinal cancers.

“Insights from Flatiron’s U.S.-derived real-world data have brought important treatment alternatives to patients with cancer around the world,” said Carolyn Starrett, Flatiron CEO. “Adding more patient experiences into the evidence that supports treatment, development and regulatory decisions is the best hope for truly transforming global cancer research and care. This agreement marks a major milestone in our commitment to bring Flatiron’s real-world data expertise into partnerships with hospitals and health networks in Asia and Europe.”

Under the agreement signed with Flatiron Health K.K., real-world data (RWD) chronicling the aggregated and de-identified experiences of consented NCCHE patients will be curated into top-quality datasets for use by NCCHE to support its research and treatment decisions, and by other researchers and regulatory decision-makers to help answer previously unanswerable questions.

Founded in 2012, Flatiron brings together the boldest and most creative minds in medicine and technology to transform how cancer is understood and treated. The treatments and outcomes of only a small percentage of cancer patients are captured in the clinical trials that have traditionally formed the evidence base for most treatment, development and regulatory decisions. Flatiron helps to fill this gap with high-quality real-world evidence (RWE) derived from aggregated, de-identified patient information captured during routine care.

Flatiron’s U.S.-derived data have helped expand treatment alternatives for people around the world with gastric, colorectal, esophageal, breast, and head and neck cancer. Now, Flatiron International subsidiaries in Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom will partner with hospitals and health networks in RWD collaborations that produce more top-quality datasets for use by the partners who provide them, in research collaborations and under license, with specific terms and conditions, to biopharma companies, to accelerate cancer research.

“Each Flatiron International partnership is tailored to local legal, regulatory, data privacy and compliance standards and requirements, and designed to help local healthcare providers and partners generate and utilize high-quality RWD to advance oncology research and care,” said Nathan Hubbard, Vice President, Head of Business Development and Flatiron International.

The datasets created in the Flatiron-NCCHE project will also be made available for analyses by SCRUM-Japan, an industry-academia collaborative whose members include NCCHE and other leading hospitals in Japan.

“We are honored to partner with NCCHE, one of Japan’s most influential cancer centers, and to collaborate with SCRUM-Japan, one of the most important cancer genomic screening national projects in the world,” said Hiroshi Kojima, Head of Market Development, Flatiron Health K.K. “We look forward to expanding this partnership beyond gastro-intestinal cancers in due course.”