Thursday, March 5, 2020

Predictive Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: POAI) Signs LOI for Acquisition of Leading Biomedical Analytics Company, Novel Drug-Discovery Platform


  • POAI’s planned acquisition of Quantitative Medicine (QM) will revolutionize the way precision therapies are developed
  • QM’s CoRE platform predicts main effects of drugs on target molecules that mediate disease
  • Synergies created by acquisition support POAI’s efforts to accelerate the commercialization of its AI-driven predictive model services
Predictive Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: POAI) has announced the latest development in its mission to become the leader in the cancer precision-medicine field. In line with its focus on applying artificial intelligence (AI) to personalized medicine and drug discovery, POAI has signed a signed a Letter of Intent to acquire Quantitative Medicine (QM), a leading biomedical analytics and computational biology company (http://ibn.fm/8X3zm).

Founded by Drs. Robert Murphy and Joshua Kangas, both of Carnegie Mellon University, QM has developed a novel, computational drug-discovery platform called CoRE. This innovative platform predicts the main effects of drugs on target molecules that mediate disease, thereby dramatically reducing the time, cost and financial risk of discovering new therapeutic drugs. POAI’s planned acquisition of QM, which is subject to the negotiation of a definitive agreement and other terms and conditions, is expected to be complete by March 2020.

“By coupling QM’s CoRE predictive modeling platform with our tumor profiling expertise and data we believe we can revolutionize the way precision therapies are developed,” Dr. Carl Schwartz, president and CEO of Predictive Oncology, stated in a news release. Schwartz explained that the synergies created by the planned acquisition should be a major support in POAI’s efforts to accelerate the commercialization of its AI-driven technology and services.

Through its subsidiary Helomics, Predictive Oncology is building AI-driven predictive models of tumor drug response and outcomes from its data base of drug-response and genomics profiles gathered from more than 150,000 cancer cases. POAI plans to integrate its proprietary data and AI-driven predictive models with CoRE to rapidly build robust predictive models of how specific types of tumors will react to cancer drug therapies.

“Our goal is to provide researchers in pharma, biopharma and diagnostic companies with actionable insights that will not only drive the development of new precision therapies, companion diagnostics, and biomarkers, but will also help them design better targeted trials,” added Schwartz. “Working together, we have the potential to dramatically improve patient outcomes.”

CoRE was developed at what was originally the Ray and Stephanie Lane Center for Computational Biology; the center eventually became the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University. CoRE has been tested by several pharma companies with considerable success. In addition to predicting the main effects of drugs on target molecules that mediate disease, CoRE is designed to predict the effects of drugs on other molecules or pathways in the body that could mediate adverse effects, as well as the interaction of these with underlying genetic variations.

Moreover, CoRE identifies similarities in relationships of drug candidates screened against a diverse matrix of pathogenic, cellular, molecular and/or systems biology targets. Drawing on CoRE’s unmatched ability to add new data from existing research or additional wet-lab experiments, POAI is confident that its predictive models will be improved—and with improved predictions comes accelerated drug discovery and development.

POAI is bringing precision medicine, or tailored medical treatment using the individual characteristics of each patient, to the treatment of cancer. Through its Helomics division, the company leverages its unique, clinically validated patient derived (PDx) smart tumor profiling platform to provide oncologists with a roadmap to help individualize therapy. In addition, the company is leveraging artificial intelligence and its proprietary database of over 150,000 cancer cases tumors to build AI-driven models of tumor drug repose to improve outcomes for the patients of today and tomorrow.

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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