AbbVie joins ORIEN Avatar Research Program

AbbVie has joined three other pharmaceutical companies in the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) Avatar Research Program.
The collaboration consists of 15 U.S. cancer hospitals and three other pharmaceutical companies with program management conducted by M2Gen, a health informatics solutions company. The research program, launched in April 2016, is based on the ORIEN Cancer Initiative.
ORIEN brought together the leading U.S. cancer centers in 2014 in a collaborative effort to study, research and develop treatments for nearly 20 cancer types. With the patients' consent, the ORIEN hospitals gather clinical and molecular data for the Total Cancer Care Protocol.
The ORIEN Avatar Program helps researchers and doctors match eligible patients to clinical trials that may best treat their cancers. The focus areas could affect more than 1.4 million newly diagnosed cancer patients every year.
"The ORIEN Avatar Research Program offers a unique and important opportunity in the effort to develop new treatments and cures for cancer," AbbVie Vice President for Oncology Discovery Steve Davidsen said. "We see enormous potential to improve patient recruitment and targeting for clinical trials, especially more in specific subsets of patients. 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."