Industry News: The Human Project, Sanofi’s Push for RWD, and a Pact to Improve Breast Cancer Outcomes

Keeping up with what’s going on in the industry can be a bit of a headache; there are new studies coming out every day and new initiatives launching all the time. Don’t stress, we’ve neatly chunked together 3 of the most interesting and useful stories from the last month – so you don’t have to! This month we hear about The Human Project; a new project aiming to track the health of 10,000 New Yorkers over the next 20 years. As well as that, we discuss Sanofi’s push for Real-World Data, and a new pact between Novartis and IBM Watson that aims to improve outcomes in advanced breast cancer.

Human Project: 10,000 New Yorkers’ health to be tracked over 20 years
By Nathaniel Scharping for The Genetic Literacy Project

If you smoke cigarettes, you’re putting yourself at a heightened risk for heart disease. That correlation is well-known and unchallenged today, but that wasn’t always so. It took an ambitious, years-long project, the Framingham Heart Study, to uncover the link, and it only happened because of the study’s commitment to comprehensive data collection. Now, a group of researchers at New York University hopes to apply similar methods to an even more formidable sample: They plan to recruit and study 10,000 New Yorkers for 20 years, using fitness trackers, physical examinations, questionnaires, and electronic data collection to piece together daily minutiae that collectively affect our health.

Sanofi plots real-world data push as Toujeo slashes hypoglycaemia risks in seniors
By Carly Helfand for FiercePharma

Sanofi’s Toujeo has plenty of competition in the basal insulin market, but new real-world data shows it may outdo its peers at cutting the risk of hypoglycaemia for older patients. And Sanofi’s planning three real-world follow-ups, a “major shift” from its usual data approach. A study examining an at-risk population of seniors who had switched to basal insulin found that at a 6-month follow-up, those taking Toujeo were 57% less likely to experience hypoglycaemia than those who switched to competing insulins—such as Novo Nordisk’s Tresiba and Levemir, and Toujeo’s own predecessor, Lantus—Sanofi announced on Tuesday.

Novartis and IBM Watson form breast cancer pact
By Marco Ricci for pharmaphorum

Novartis and IBM Watson have formed a new partnership aimed at improving outcomes in advanced breast cancer. The companies will create a cognitive platform capable of using real-world data to better predict treatment effects on patients. The goal is to create software that provides better insights to oncologists, ultimately leading to more informed treatment decisions and better patient outcomes. The deal comes hot on the heels of the presentation of new data from a Novartis-sponsored Watson feasibility study at ASCO. In the study, Watson for Clinical Trial Matching reduced time required to screen patients for clinical trials by 78%.