MSK opens up its cancer data through OpenEvidence. Which healthcare and biotech entrepreneurs made the Forbes 400 for the first time. Persistent generic cancer drug shortages. These stories and more in this week’s InnovationRx newsletter. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

Memorial Sloan Kettering knows a lot about cancer. The New York-based oncology hospital is sitting on a treasure trove of data, based on years of study of genetic variants of different cancers and their potential treatments. Now MSK is opening up that gold mine of information to physicians nationwide through a partnership with OpenEvidence, the $15 billion (valuation) clinical tool that’s used by the majority of doctors in the U.S.

The number of innovative cancer treatments has exploded over the past decade, but figuring out which one a patient will best respond to is complex–and cycling through different options takes time that many patients can’t afford to spend. But access to MSK’s data could help cancer care providers make more informed decisions about treatment options based on the molecular specifics of each patient’s disease. OpenEvidence’s AI search tool helps clinicians find answers to their questions with clinically validated information and studies from leading scientific journals. MSK’s database, built up over the past 14 years, will be fully integrated into it.

“It expands MSK’s expertise beyond MSK,” Dr. Anaeze Offodile, MSK’s chief strategy officer, tells Forbes. “We think of this as a distribution mechanism … so people who are treated thousands of miles from MSK can get access to MSK’s precision oncology expertise.”

Today, there are 263 FDA-approved oncology therapies, nearly half of which require biomarker testing to determine if a patient needs the drug, according to Debyani Chakravarty, a molecular biologist at MSK and the lead scientist on its OncoKB database. Yet rural and underserved populations, who are typically seen at community cancer centers by oncologists who don’t have the luxury of specialization, often don’t even receive that testing. The social disparities in cancer treatment are stark. Despite advances in early detection of breast cancer and treatment, for example, Black women face a nearly 40% higher mortality rate from the disease than white women. “We need to get more community practices to adopt precision oncology care,” Chakravarty says.

A potentially even bigger deal: OpenEvidence plans to use the MSK data, in concert with information it gained from an earlier agreement with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, to work on developing its........

© Forbes