- POAI
subsidiary Helomics announce sequencing of ovarian tumor cases from UPMC
Magee collaboration, a critical step in strategic Cancer Quest 2020
initiative
- Data
key to value in $48-billion precision-medicine industry
- Industry
leaders such as POAI realize critical value in patient-specific,
data-driven models
The field of drug development for cancer treatment involves
costly and time-intensive research. As technology plays an ever-increasing role
in driving medicine, researchers and clinicians are discovering the significant
potential of patient-derived models in matching specific cancer types with
their most effective treatments. These models, which harness the patients’ own
cancer cells to best determine how to defeat them, have been shown to be “a
valuable tool for the identification of new treatment targets” (http://ibn.fm/DBK3s). To prepare
for this next major frontier of precision medicine, industry leaders realize
the critical value in these patient-derived (PDx) models of cancer. While most
competitors are just getting their feet wet in both developing these PDx models
and generating data from them, Predictive
Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: POAI) has been swimming in the deep end for some
time, boasting an immensely valuable historic database of drug response for
patients from its own proprietary PDx tumor models.
In the precision-medicine industry, the value of any
predictive model is directly related to the quality and quantity of data used
to build it. The richer and more extensive a predictive model’s data set, the
more accurate and generalizable the predictions become. This predictive value
translates into tremendous dollar potential in the field of precision medicine,
a $48 billion industry in 2018 (http://ibn.fm/F7n7L),
and Predictive Oncology is well positioned in this regard. Through its
partnership with UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital, POAI subsidiary Helomics has been
able to analyze “the genomic and drug-response profiles of women with ovarian
cancer to build AI-driven predictive model of response to therapy” (http://ibn.fm/YQKky). Recently,
Helomics announced that it has begun sequencing the tumor cases from this
collaboration, a critical step in its strategic Cancer Quest 2020
project (http://ibn.fm/F93kH)
as POAI moves towards the goal of building out its extensive database of tumor
drug-response data.
“These retrospective ovarian cancer cases were profiled [by]
Helomics as early as 2010; hence, we have 10 years’ worth of drug-treatment
data, survival and other outcome measures we are gathering from Magee’s
clinical databases,” stated Helomics chief innovation officer Dr. Mark Collins.
“We are now sequencing these cases, looking at both the tumor mutations
(genome) as well as tumor-gene expression (transcriptome) to build a
comprehensive multi-omic picture of the tumor. We are also using deep learning
on histopathology images of the tumor tissue (tissue-omics) to add an additional
dimension to this multi-omic profile. We believe the combination of the rich
multi-omic profile of the tumor and clinical outcome data will allow us to
build an AI-driven model of ovarian cancer capable of predicting the tumor drug
response and patient outcome (prognosis).”
POAI’s platform, composed of over 150,000 patient tumors,
harnesses the power of an individual patient’s tumor to help recommend the best
treatment for that patient. This database, which houses evidence documenting
actual drug responses of cancer patients’ individual tumors, uses artificial
intelligence to create a valuable predictive tool for pharmaceutical companies
and researchers.
Industry leaders believe that models utilizing
patient-derived data powered by artificial intelligence will allow doctors to
make more effective individualized treatment recommendations, changing the
landscape of cancer treatment. The predictive models can be applied clinically
for patients of today, and they can also be used in the development of new drugs
by researchers to help cancer patients of tomorrow.
Predictive Oncology offers the potential for significant ROI
as it focuses on improving patient outcomes, changing the status quo of cancer
treatment.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Predictive-Oncology.com
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates
relating to POAI are available in the company’s newsroom at http://ibn.fm/POAI
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