Characterizing the Anticancer Treatment Trajectory and Pattern in Patients Receiving Chemotherapy for Cancer Using Harmonized Observational Databases: Retrospective Study.

Background: Accurate and rapid clinical decisions based on real-world evidence are essential for patients with cancer. However, the complexity of chemotherapy regimens for cancer impedes retrospective research that uses observational health databases.

Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the anticancer treatment trajectories and patterns of clinical events according to regimen type using the chemotherapy episodes determined by an algorithm.

Standardized Observational Cancer Research Using the OMOP CDM Oncology Module.

Observational research in cancer requires substantially more detail than most other therapeutic areas. Cancer conditions are defined through histology, affected anatomical structures, staging and grading, and biomarkers, and are treated with complex therapies. Here, we show a new cancer module as part of the OMOP CDM, allowing manual and automated abstraction and standardized analytics.

HemOnc: A new standard vocabulary for chemotherapy regimen representation in the OMOP common data model.

Systematic application of observational data to the understanding of impacts of cancer treatments requires detailed information models allowing meaningful comparisons between treatment regimens. Unfortunately, details of systemic therapies are scarce in registries and data warehouses, primarily due to the complex nature of the protocols and a lack of standardization. Since 2011, we have been creating a curated and semi-structured website of chemotherapy regimens, HemOnc.

Deceased-donor kidney transplantation: improvement in long-term survival.

Background: Despite marked improvement in short-term renal allograft survival rates (GSR) in recent years, improvement in long-term GSR remained elusive.

Methods: We analysed the kidney transplant experience at our centre accrued over four decades to evaluate how short-term and long-term GSR had changed and to identify risk factors affecting graft survival. The study included 1476 adult recipients of a deceased-donor kidney transplant who were transplanted between 1963 and 2006 and who had received one of five distinct immunosuppressive protocols.

Novel method for genomic analysis of PKD1 and PKD2 mutations in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease.

Genetic testing of PKD1 and PKD2 is useful for diagnosis and prognosis of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), particularly in asymptomatic individuals or those without a family history. PKD1 testing is complicated by the large transcript size, complexity of the gene region, and the extent of gene variations. A molecular assay was developed using Transgenomic's SURVEYOR Nuclease and WAVE Nucleic Acid High Sensitivity Fragment Analysis System to screen for PKD1 and PKD2 variants, followed by sequencing of variant gene segments, thereby reducing the sequencing reactions by 80%.