The main objective of this HORIZON 2020 project is to clinically validate a personalised medicine tool that predicts the most effective treatment option in myeloma patients. Currently, there are a range of single/combination novel agents and chemotherapy drugs available and in development for myeloma, the second most common type of blood cancer. As myeloma is a very heterogeneous disease, not every treatment is suitable for each patient. There is therefore an urgent need for a diagnostic tool that supports treatment decision-making in order to improve patient health outcomes, increase the value of new medicines to healthcare systems and to reduce healthcare costs.

SkylineDx will develop MMpredict, a microarray-test that can be used for genetic subtyping of MM patients. This tool should be able to determine the most effective treatment option for a patient by predicting their treatment response based on gene expression profiling (GEP). From the patient perspective, the prediction of treatment responses is linked to a social benefit and better quality of life – this is also related to an economic benefit for European healthcare systems.

Patient survey: measuring quality of life

Harmony is a public-private European Network of Excellence part of the innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). Harmony aims to facilitate the growth of personalised medicine, the identification of the most effective treatments and improve diagnosis by collecting and spreading valuable clinical data on hematologic malignancies through a big data platform.

MPE is part of the Harmony Patient Cluster, a group of 7 European umbrella patient organisations covering the different haematological diseases within the Harmony Alliance. Our role is to bring unique insights from patients’ perspective into the consortium which also comprises researchers, industry and regulators. We highlight and analyse the data uploaded on the Harmony data platform that can give us information around patients’ quality of life. This data helps detect barriers and areas to be improved in myeloma to ensure quality of life and patient centricity in myeloma research. By studying quality of life or patient reported outcomes data associated with specific treatments, we can determine how these treatments affect patients’ everyday life and make sure that not only treatment efficacy will be assessed in future studies, but also their impact on patient’s lives.