CRO

Datavant integrates 150 data sets, teams with Duke, G3, Verge Genomics

Aimed at helping drug development by improving the design and interpretation of clinical trials through data, Roivant Sciences’ Datavant is quickly expanding its database and has formed a series of partnerships with researchers.

Launched three months ago, Datavant said it has so far integrated 150 data sets from biopharma companies, payers, healthcare providers and analytics companies that include clinical trial data, claims, pharmacy history, electronic health records and genomics on over 150 million patients.

These data will be used in three collaborations Datavant has thus far announced with the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Global Genomics Group (G3) and Verge Genomics.

For DCRI, an organization under the Duke University School of Medicine known for conducting clinical research and managing patient registries, Datavant will provide early access to its data and technology. As Datavant’s founding academic partner, DCRI brings its analytical and data expertise to the partnership, whose initial focus is on the phase 2 design in the cardiopulmonary area.

“The promise of this partnership comes from the blend of the DCRI’s analytic innovations with Datavant's unique data sets, creating unmatched capacity for discovery,” said Michael Pencina, Ph.D., DCRI’s director of biostatistics, in a statement.

RELATED: Former FDA chief information officer and Takeda executive lands at Datavant

The other two deals are genomics- or precision-medicine-related.

Datavant will work with G3 on the latter’s G3LOBAL database, which has multi-omic data on about 8,000 patients. Complemented by Datavant’s own data set with clinical data and real-world evidence, the pair hopes to create new models for developing trial enrollment criteria, endpoints and contextualizing trial results.

“[W]e believe that the combination of biological Big Data, together with sophisticated analytical tools, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, are essential to turning around the pharmaceutical industry and drug development,” G3 founder and CEO Szilard Voros, M.D., said in a statement.

G3’s approach, which uses biological big data and artificial intelligence to develop diagnostics and therapeutics, shares some similarities with Verge Genomics’.

RELATED: In conversation with: Alice Zhang, CEO of Verge Genomics

Founded by Alice Zhang, Verge operates under the notion that diseases are caused by complex interactions between many genes. Through analysis of loads of genomic data and the help of artificial intelligence, Verge tries to figure out the many genes that co-regulate a disease and then find drugs that target them together.

With an initial focus on neurodegenerative diseases, Verge has itself generated what it said is the world’s largest proprietary database of genomic data in Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but this is the first time the biotech has tapped into the pharmaceutical data landscape. From Datavant’s perspective, connecting data from early discovery to clinical development could unlock new opportunities for trial design and interpretation.

“Verge’s robust data and expertise in computational biology add tremendous value in contextualizing signals seen in clinical trials and providing a foundation for better trial designs,” Datavant co-founder and president Travis May said in a statement.

While growing its database, Datavant has also recruited some experts in data technology and medicine, including former FDA chief information officer and Takeda SVP of bioinformatics, Eric Perakslis, as its CSO.