Press Release, 15 June 2019, Amsterdam
“To answer the key outstanding questions in the field of hematology, we need harmonized and high-quality data on treatment outcomes in thousands of patients which today are contained in multiple clinical trials and registries”, says Mario Boccadoro, University of Turin, Leadership of the HARMONY Research Project on Multiple Myeloma. “HARMONY has developed technical and organizational procedures to overcome these obstacles, allowing the alliance to assemble anonymized data records from thousands of European patients into one harmonized Big Data Platform.”
HARMONY researchers are already mining the Big Data Platform to address pressing research questions such as: Does one specific treatment provide improved outcomes in patients with aggressive Multiple Myeloma?; Which subgroups of Myelodysplastic Syndromes patients benefit from treatment with hypomethylating agents? What are the most important outcomes for Acute Myeloid Leukemia, according to patients, clinicians, health authorities, and the pharmaceutical industry?
Read more about the current 7 HARMONY Research Projects and its HM project
“Mining this unique Big Data Platform to address pressing research questions will give us better insight in the molecular landscape of blood cancers and the prognostic value of disease related variables, hence increasing our understanding of their pathophysiology. Making use of Big Data analytics in blood cancer research will lead us faster to identifying novel drug targets”, says Bruno Costa, Celgene and representing the EFPIA members in HARMONY. “Ultimately, our goal is that, together, we can accelerate drug development, regulatory evaluation, access appraisal, and treatment strategies to improve the care of patients with these blood cancers.”
Relevant links:
About the HARMONY Alliance: a public-private European Network of Excellence for Big Data in Hematology, established in January 2017. Our mission is to unlock and spread valuable knowledge on hematologic malignancies (blood cancers) among a large number of stakeholders, with the goal to harness and mine Big Data to speed up the development of improved treatments for patients and more effective treatment strategies.
HARMONY currently has 53 Partners and 35 Associated Members from 22 countries. HARMONY is funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients.
HARMONY has received funding from IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement No. 116026. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). IMI supports collaborative research projects and builds networks of industrial and academic experts in order to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe.
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Public-private partnership for Big Data in Hematology
HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Funding is received from the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement for HARMONY No. 116026 and grant agreement for HARMONY PLUS No. 945406. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
HARMONY Coordination Office
Institute of Biomedical Research of
Salamanca (IBSAL)
Salamanca, Spain
HARMONY Communications
European Hematology Association (EHA)
The Hague, The Netherlands
