"Our Mission Is To Eliminate Cancer" – Here's How This Company Is Using AI In An Attempt To Save Lives

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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The longstanding idea of cancer treatment typically falls to chemotherapy or radiation, but a growing body of medical literature suggests that an alternative solution may be more efficient.

Cancer responds to patients and drugs in a seemingly inconsistent fashion. For example, the degree of successful rehabilitation from chemotherapy can differ greatly between two patients with the same type and stage of cancer.

According to a paper in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, because of disease heterogeneity, “standard treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiation, are effective in only a subset of the patient population. Tumors can have different underlying genetic causes and may express different proteins in one patient versus another.”

The expanding literature noting cancer’s idiosyncrasies across demographics has led to the growth of precision and personalized medicine (PPM) – a field that treats cancer in a case-by-case fashion. This trend represents a divergence from the standardized approach of chemo-radioactive therapy. Proponents of this field argue that personalized cancer treatment can lead to more efficient treatments, improved patient outcomes, and faster time to market.

Companies have already shown their creativity in this emerging field. Fusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. FUSN, for example, can sequester radiation into one-to-three cell lengths, causing the precise destruction of tumors without damaging healthy cells. Exscientia EXAI, on the other hand, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make safer and more sophisticated drugs available to all.

An example of an up-and-comer for this emerging field is Predictive Oncology Inc. POAI, a knowledge-driven company focused on applying AI to the research and development (R&D) process of personalized cancer therapies. 

Through AI, Predictive Oncology reports that it can analyze multiple, well-characterized patient tumor databases against a variety of drug compounds. The output provides a set of tumor types and drug compounds more likely to succeed in clinical development and for patient treatment.  

With its recent study, POAI finds that its proprietary AI program could identify new chemotherapy drug uses for personalized cancer treatments, and it’s now considering biopharmaceutical companies for potential partners. 

How It Works

POAI has built a pipeline of data-acquiring, data-analyzing and pharmaceutical formulation subsidiary companies that streamlines the process of cancer therapeutics from start to finish.

The Predictive Oncology Solution:

• Helomics, a POAI subsidiary:
  • Accelerated the discovery of new precision oncology medicine therapies through PeDAL™ – Patient-centric Discovery by Active Learning – and CoRE™ Active Learning for constructive models of drug response. 
  • Uses a historical database of 150,000 patient-drug response profiles. 
• TumorGenesis, a POAI subsidiary: 
  • Focuses on developing an approach to growing tumors in the laboratory that mimic those in the patient’s body. 
  • Used to fuel unique and clinically-actionable data.
• Soluble Biotech, a POAI subsidiary: 
  • Employs technology designed to optimize pharmaceutical formulations.
  • Facilitates the delivery of protein-based therapeutics for cancer targets. 

Commenting on its recent study and its relevance to pharmaceutical companies, Predictive Oncology CEO J. Melville Engle said the following in an interview:

“This is the proof of concept. Now, what we’re going to do is take it [the platform] out to the world and be able to demonstrate how this can be applied in their own backyard with their own compounds. This can accelerate their overall R&D process and save millions of dollars a year.”

For more on the company and its plans for 2022, click here.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.