Predictive Oncology and Cvergenx Enter Genomics-Based Personalized Therapy Collaboration

Predictive Oncology, a biopharma company specializing in drug discovery, and Cvergenx, a genomics information company, announced the launch of a strategic partnership on Feb. 23, 2023. The goal of this partnership is to develop a genomics-based artificial intelligence (AI) approach to personalized radiotherapy and drug discovery.

The collaboration will utilize Predictive Oncology’s drug discovery, AI, and machine learning capabilities with Cvergenx’s precision genomics radiation therapy (pGRT) platform to pursue novel ways of optimizing radiotherapy (RT). According to a company press release, the companies believe this could potentially lead to the repurposing of existing compounds or the development of an entirely new class of drugs.

“The central principle in precision medicine is that cancer therapy should be tailored to the individual tumor biology. Even so, radiation therapy, the most commonly utilized therapeutic agent in clinical oncology, has yet to enter the era of precision therapy,” said Raymond F. Vennare, CEO, Predictive Oncology, in the release. “We believe that the next and most significant paradigm shift in the field of radiation oncology will come from exploiting tumor genomics to optimize RT prescription dose and to identify drug targets for the development of radiosensitizers and radioprotectors for biopharma and industry.”

“Today, RT is prescribed based on a one-size-fits-all approach where all tumors are treated with uniform doses of RT. pGRT provides the first clinically validated approach to optimize RT prescription dose for each individual patient,” explained Javier F. Torres-Roca, co-founder and acting CEO, Cvergenx, in the release. “The pGRT platform has been shown to correctly identify radiosensitizers and radioprotectors from large pharmacogenomic screens. We believe this knowledge can improve the clinical outcome of patients treated with radiotherapy.”

Source: Predictive Oncology