MatchMiner: An open source platform for cancer precision medicine

Abstract

AbstractThe systematic deployment of next generation sequencing means patient tumors can be genomically profiled and specific genetic alterations can be targeted with precision medicine (PM) drugs. More therapeutic clinical trials are needed to test new PM drugs to advance precision medicine, however, the availability of comprehensive patient sequencing data coupled with complex clinical trial eligibility has made it challenging to match patients to PM trials. To facilitate enrollment onto PM trials, we developed MatchMiner. MatchMiner is an open-source platform to computationally match genomically profiled cancer patients to PM trials. Here, we describe MatchMiner’s capabilities, outline its deployment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), and characterize its impact on PM trial enrollment. MatchMiner’s two primary goals are to (1) facilitate PM trial options for all patients, and (2) accelerate trial enrollment onto PM trials. MatchMiner has 3 main modes of use: (1) patient-centric, where a clinician looks up trial options for an individual patient, (2) trial-centric, where a trial team identifies candidate patients for their trial by setting up a filter, and (3) trial search, where a clinician can find trial options for patients that have external genomic reports. From the time MatchMiner was first deployed at DFCI in March 2016 through March 2021, we curated 354 PM trials containing a broad range of genomic and clinical eligibility criteria and MatchMiner facilitated 166 trial consents (MatchMiner consents, MMC) for 159 patients. To quantify MatchMiner’s impact on trial consent, we retrospectively measured time from genomic sequencing report date to trial consent date for the 166 MMC compared to trial consents not facilitated by MatchMiner (non-MMC). We found MMC consented to trials 55 days (22%) earlier than non-MMC. MatchMiner has enabled our clinicians to match patients to PM trials and accelerated the trial enrollment decision making process.