Why carry out this study?

The identification of cancer progression events (i.e., disease worsening) is important for assessing therapeutic benefit. Measuring cancer progression using real-world data (RWD) requires distinct methodology from measuring progression in a clinical trial setting

We previously developed a novel method to reliably ascertain real-world cancer progression (rwP) in a cohort of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (aNSCLC) using de-identified data from an electronic health record (EHR)-derived database (base case). We conducted this methodological study to determine whether the same method could identify cancer progression in five additional solid tumor types with a range of disease characteristics: metastatic breast cancer (mBC), advanced melanoma (aMel), small cell lung cancer (SCLC), metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), and advanced gastric/esophageal cancer (aGEC)

What was learned from this study?

Our results show that, with disease-specific additions to the base case for mBC, aMel, and SCLC, derivation of rwP from EHR documentation is feasible across the five additional cancers, despite differences in tumor biology

In addition, rwP can be used in endpoint analyses to produce clinically meaningful information that may be valuable in research

We believe our approach for reliably measuring rwP in multiple tumor types is a key metric to assess interventions to improve outcomes and enhance survival and quality of life for patients with cancer