A Computer-Based Calculator to Assess Tumor Response to Treatment

Emory University
posted on 01/18/2012

Application

Software to automatically calculate Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECSIT) and assess a patient's response to cancer treatment.

Key Benefits

Provides the automated evaluation of response to cancer treatment.
Enables a more consistent assessment than current methods.
User-friendly data input format.

Market Summary

RECSIT criteria are utilized in evaluating a cancer patient's condition in clinical trials. There are nearly 3,000 clinical trials for new cancer therapies currently on-going in the US alone, and even more across the rest of the world. All of these trials involve a multitude of clinical researchers and massive amounts of data to manipulate, organize and store. In 2011 alone, there have been 1.6 million new cancer diagnoses, and a software solution that could be used to monitor progress in all of these cancer patients in a more automated fashion would be valuable.

Technical Summary

RECSIT is a widely used set of guidelines to measure a patient's response to cancer treatment. These criteria were set by an international collaboration including the National Cancer Institutes of the US, Canada and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer. Today, nearly all clinical trials utilize these guidelines to assess response of solid tumors to treatment. Emory researchers have developed an Automated RECSIT Calculator (ARC) into which a patient's data are entered. A RECSIT score is automatically calculated, labeling a patient with one of four outcomes: complete response, partial response, stable disease or progressive disease. This software enables consistent assessment of patient outcomes across all clinical trials, and improves the ease of tracking those results.