Using molecular diagnostics to transform the patient experience and unlock novel therapies.
Precision medicine is transforming oncology with targeted therapies that improve and extend cancer patients’ lives. But precision diagnostics have fallen behind. In their clinical practices at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, physician-scientists Dr. Irene Ghobrial and Dr. Kenneth Anderson saw firsthand this gap between the state-of-the-art immunotherapies increasingly at their disposal, and the archaic diagnostic processes available to help them in their treatment decisions. “Most of the drugs we use are targeted therapies,” says Dr. Ghobrial, “but we often don’t know which patients will or will not respond.” And for blood cancers, like multiple myeloma, even those limited tests require a bone marrow biopsy—a painful surgical procedure, which often yields limited clinical value.
Predicta Biosciences, a precision oncology startup, has developed an innovative diagnostics platform that uses multiomic data to enable diagnosis, guide precision treatment, and unlock novel therapies. Its proprietary laboratory workflow is highly efficient at isolating circulating tumor cells from blood samples alone, while still allowing for whole-genome DNA and single-cell RNA sequencing of even early stage cancers. For patients, that means a blood draw rather than a painful bone marrow biopsy. For clinicians, Predicta offers Laboratory Developed Test (LDT) and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) approved tests: GenoPredicta in the bone marrow and/or Blood, which measure a spectrum of genomic alterations and can be used to molecularly diagnose individuals who have or are at risk for multiple myeloma and inform therapeutic management.
“With our GenoPredicta tests, we have an incredible opportunity to overcome the current challenges and limitations in the diagnosis and prognosis of multiple myeloma, plasma cell malignancies and other blood cancers, and ultimately optimize treatment decisions for patients throughout their disease journey,” said Dr. Irene Ghobrial, co-founder of Predicta.
Predicta’s diagnostic products combine DNA for cancer cell analysis or RNA for immune system analysis—all from a blood draw—to provide the broadest possible data for clinicians to understand how each individual patient will respond to treatment. Its new GenoPredicta Marrow or Blood tests employ whole genome sequencing (WGS) to detect genomic alterations in tumor cells, diminish the reliance on FISH and comparable diagnostic tools, identify patients with high-risk multiple myeloma, and reveal patients who won’t respond to certain therapeutic agents such as CAR-T and bispecific antibodies.
“As WGS-based assays, our GenoPredicta tests go beyond what is traditionally tested for to identify additional variant types, which can be highly relevant for targeted therapy and immunotherapy selection,” says Dr. Anderson, co-founder. “We can empower physicians with detailed information about their patients' unique molecular data.” In the clinic, that presents the possibility of bypassing first-line toxic chemotherapies, in favor of advanced immunotherapies like CAR T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies. The use of blood rather than bone marrow biopsy lowers the barrier to sophisticated diagnostics, increasing the likelihood of early detection, and offering new clinical strategies over the course of disease. “We’re not only eliminating the invasive, painful element of traditional bone marrow biopsies, but we're enabling increased detection, monitoring and access,” he added.
As Predicta’s one-of-a-kind database of multiomic patient data expands, it becomes the foundation for drug discovery. After collecting serial timepoints pre- and post-treatment, of both malignant and non-malignant cells, Predicta then uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to characterize the differences, with the aim of identifying drug targets and immune signatures. “This degree of diagnostic data is essential for fueling discovery,” says Dr. Gad Getz, co-founder and director of the Cancer Genome Computational Analysis at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the director of bioinformatics at the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at Mass General Hospital. “Our database is constantly growing—bringing us closer to our goal of one day curing the patients we diagnose.”