io9 Announces Publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Demonstrating Efficacy of OncoGaze™, its Next-Generation AI Platform Poised to Eliminate Delays and Inequities in Correct First-Line Precision Treatment Selection for Cancer Patients
01 August 2024 - 6:18AM
Business Wire
- DeepHRD, OncoGaze’s first clinically actionable biomarker
test, identifies patients with Homologous Recombination Deficiency
(HRD) from routine tissue slides
- DeepHRD outperformed FDA-approved HRD companion diagnostics by
increasing the treatable patient population 1.8- to 3.1-fold
- Patients identified as HRD-positive by DeepHRD had better
therapeutic response
io9, a software company developing an AI platform for precision
oncology that enables the correct front-line targeted therapy at
diagnosis, today announced the publication of a positive validation
study for OncoGazeTM. OncoGaze™ is an AI-biomarker platform to
identify clinically actionable biomarkers, eliminating the need for
costly and time-consuming next-generation sequencing (NGS) for
first-line treatment. The study, published in the Journal of
Clinical Oncology, a journal of the American Society of Clinical
Oncology (ASCO), reported that DeepHRD, the first biomarker test in
the OncoGazeTM AI platform, outperformed FDA-approved homologous
recombination deficiency (HRD) companion diagnostics in identifying
patients with high-grade serous-ovarian cancer (HGSOC) and
metastatic breast cancer who would likely respond to PARP-inhibitor
and/or platinum therapy, the two current drug classes proven to
target HRD. The study data demonstrate that OncoGazeTM outperforms
NGS to both capture larger treatable patient populations and better
predict therapeutic response.
“Precision medicine has transformed outcomes for cancer
patients, but many with advanced cancer who are eligible for
precision therapy are not receiving the right first-line treatments
because the journey from diagnosis to therapeutic selection is
costly, time consuming, and confusing,” said senior author Ludmil
Alexandrov, Ph.D., co-founder, chief scientific officer of io9 and
professor of bioengineering and professor of cellular and molecular
medicine at University of California San Diego. “This study
illustrates how DeepHRD can predict HRD in breast and ovarian
cancer from routine pathology slides at the time of initial
diagnosis. Our goal is to move this deep-learning AI platform into
the clinical arena as quickly as possible, and we look forward to
continuing our work to make a real, immediate and immense
difference in the lives of cancer patients and their families by
getting them onto the treatments they need faster.”
Created by a team of engineers, clinical oncologists and medical
researchers, the OncoGazeTM AI platform is designed to complement a
pathologist’s routine review of a hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)
whole biopsy slide to identify clinically actionable biomarkers
more quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively than standard
molecular testing.
“OncoGaze™ is a groundbreaking technology that allows a
pathologist to determine an actionable tumor biomarker at the time
of cancer diagnosis, which can reduce the therapeutic selection
timeline from weeks to seconds and enables more patients to receive
precision treatments,” said Greg Hamilton, CEO of io9. “This
platform optimally integrates pathologists into first-line
precision oncology workflows. We believe that OncoGaze™ has the
potential to ultimately help oncologists and their patients win the
race against time by getting them onto the correct treatment sooner
which can lead to better outcomes.”
In the study, DeepHRD outperformed FDA-approved HRD companion
diagnostics in identifying more HRD-positive patients. Moreover,
metastatic breast cancer patients identified by DeepHRD as having
HRD exhibited better complete response and progression-free
survival when treated with platinum-specific therapies, while
platinum-treated ovarian cancer patients exhibited better overall
survival. The study evaluated multiple independent clinical cohorts
with 141 ovarian cancer and 349 breast cancers patients. When
compared to NGS, DeepHRD classified 1.8- to 3.1-fold more patients
with HRD in ovarian and metastatic breast cancers, respectively.
The published data provide proof-of-concept for io9’s OncoGaze™
platform, and underscore DeepHRD’s potential to significantly
increase access to precision medicines across other cancer types,
notably castrate-resistant prostate and pancreatic cancers, where
HRD is common, clinically actionable and universally
recommended.
“This high-impact publication is a pivotal clinical milestone
for this rapidly emerging field of AI and oncology,” said co-senior
author and io9 co-founder Scott Lippman, M.D., distinguished
professor of medicine at UC San Diego. “Oncologists and their
patients currently wait weeks for NGS test results, required to
identify potentially lifesaving first-line precision oncology
therapies. Up to one-third of patients don’t get an answer at all
because of an insufficient tissue sample or inconclusive test
results, which limits the reach, and confounds the promise of
precision oncology. This new generation of AI profiling applied to
routine H&E slides can complement first-line oncologic decision
making, and dramatically shorten this critical time delay from
diagnosis to therapy, a primary determinant of patient
survival.”
Since its founding in 2021, io9 has made significant progress in
advancing the OncoGaze™ platform. The company has the exclusive
license to this technology from University of California San Diego
and plans to expand the OncoGaze™ platform to encompass additional
biomarkers, including KRAS, EGFR and BRAF to help tailor optimal
therapy decisions for patients and facilitate clinical-trial
enrollment and stratification, for a broader variety of cancers
including lung, colorectal, and other cancers with well-defined
actionable biomarkers.
“OncoGaze™ is a robust platform that can identify biomarkers
across multiple cancer types from a digital image of an H&E
slide. As such, this scalable cloud-based platform has the
opportunity to enable precision medicine across the globe,” said
Erik Bergstrom, Ph.D., lead author of the study.
About io9
io9 is a software company developing AI platforms for precision
oncology that enables the correct front-line targeted therapy
selection at diagnosis. io9’s OncoGaze™ software utilizes a digital
image of routine pathology slides to identify well defined
actionable biomarkers such as homologous recombination deficiency
(HRD) and KRAS with a rapid, inexpensive and more accurate platform
than next generation sequencing. As a cutting-edge AI platform,
OncoGaze™ has the potential to enable precision oncology therapy
selection globally as a cost effective SAAS solution. For more
information, visit io9.ai and follow on LinkedIn and X.
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