With the aim of contributing to new diagnostic and treatment strategies for cancer patients thanks to AI, several companies, institutions and organisations have joined forces to launch the “Filière Artificial Intelligence et Cancer” association. This public/private partnership has 11 founding members: the National Cancer Institute, the Health Data Hub, the Alliance for Research and Innovation in the Health Industries, France Biotech and seven health industrialists. All of its missions are in the general interest.

A private/public partnership to bring innovation and artificial intelligence to oncology

Created on August 3, 2021, the “Filière Intelligence Artificielle et Cancer” association aims to strengthen public/private partnerships in order to stimulate cancer research for the benefit of the entire population. Together, each of the players will combine their strengths in their respective fields:

• Public representatives (the National Cancer Institute, the Health Data Hub, the Alliance for Research and Innovation in the Health Industries, France Biotech) bring their global and federating vision and guarantee, as a trusted third party, the respect of the public interest of good data use
• Healthcare industrialists (Amgen, AstraZeneca, Janssen, MSD France, Novartis, Pfizer, Pierre Fabre) contribute their development capacity.

This new association will be invested with several missions with the objective of improving the quality and relevance of the oncology innovation ecosystem for the benefit of all patients:

• To unite public and private Founding Members in a national initiative that can benefit the entire oncology innovation ecosystem;
• To associate data from industrial projects with data produced by public oncology organizations;
• Deploy and validate technologies that can extend and facilitate Cancer Data Reuse Projects;
• Encourage industry to produce oncology data and promote its use within the National Cancer Institute’s cancer data platform and the Heath Data Hub’s health data platform;
• To develop and promote cancer research and encourage the work of researchers and clinicians around cancer data.

On September 8, during the first board meeting held at the National Cancer Institute, the eleven founding members signed the “Charter of the association’s shared values”, which defines the principles and procedures that each member must respect in terms of transparency and ethics in the context of the missions they will be carrying out.

Enabling the integration of private research data into the cancer data platform

Seven years ago, the National Cancer Institute’s cancer data platform was designed. It currently processes data from the National Health Data System (SNDS), clinical practices, in particular the communicating cancer file, surveillance and observation structures (such as cancer registries), regional screening coordination centers, studies, including clinical-biological databases, biotech or tumor libraries, and cohorts combining clinical, biological and “omics” information and clinical trials.

With the association “Filière Intelligence Artificielle et Cancer”, certain data from research carried out by industrialists on the molecules or drugs they develop could be integrated into the Institute’s platform. This project also represents an opportunity for public research to develop numerous projects using data from private research. The aim of this action is to accelerate research in France for the benefit of patients, to promote access to innovations for patients and to reinforce the attractiveness of France in this field.

This project has been selected by the public investment bank (BPI), which is supporting it with €8 million. In all, 16 million euros will be allocated, since each of the seven private companies that are members of the association will contribute a little over one million euros.

Several projects led by private groups for the reuse of oncology data

Among the projects that aim to reuse data in oncology are:

• An initiative led by AstraZeneca to compare results from public and private data in the long-term follow-up of lung cancer patients who have received a treatment under a Temporary Use Authorization (TUA).
• This project is led by Amgen, which wants to optimize treatment to prolong the survival of patients with hematological malignancies (blood cancer). The originality of this project lies in the concrete application of machine learning and statistical methods.
• The Novartis action to provide new knowledge about certain cancers with molecular alterations. Based on the matching of data from cancer molecular genetics platforms with data from the Cancer cohort, it will be possible to describe the management of patients with molecularly altered cancers and to define their prognosis, in order to improve this management.

In the future, all founding members will contribute their efforts to meet the requirements of the various missions.

Translated from Lancement de l’association “Filière Intelligence Artificielle et Cancer”, un partenariat public/privé pour accélérer l’innovation dans le cancer