Count Me In, a research initiative that allows cancer patients to share data directly with researchers, launched the Colorectal Cancer Project Sept. 14.
The new project aims to accelerate the pace of research by enabling all patients who've ever been diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the U.S. and Canada to easily share tumor samples, medical records and other data directly with researchers.
Scientists from Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., will use the shared information to generate clinical, genomic, molecular, and patient-reported databases that are then de-identified and distributed to the research community.
Any findings from the initiative will be shared with patients who submitted information.
To date, more than 9,000 patients with different cancers have shared data for Count Me In projects.