German oncology company, Indivumed, is launching an international collaborative—the Oncology Alliance for Individualized Medicine—to advance the personalized treatment of cancer through multi-omics analysis and machine learning.
The Alliance, dubbed Onco AI-Med, will make use of Indivumed’s multi-omics database, IndivuType, to accelerate new insights into the personalized treatment of cancer.
The IndivuType platform gathers comprehensive genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, phosphoproteomics, morphology and clinical information from tissue and clinical data, which is then integrated through advanced artificial intelligence tools, according to Indivumed. The company believes its platform delivers “the most comprehensive oncology multi-omics asset available today.”
A “large number” of leading cancer clinics and research institutions from around the world are now participating in the Onco AI-Med network, according to a statement released April 15 by Indivumed, with participants currently located in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Indivumed is “continuously” adding more hospitals worldwide, based on their research activity, number of cancer cases and expertise in advanced molecular oncology, the company said.
Onco AI-Med’s research is organized around tumor entities, with specific working groups for each type, Indivumed said. The working groups will explore the best use of the data sets available in IndivuType and link them to real world clinical care through specific research projects. The work is directed by an advisory board of top thought leaders in oncology, headed up by John Marshall, MD, chief of the hematology/oncology at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC.
“The work we are doing is without precedent,” said Marshall, who is also director of the Washington, DC-based Otto J. Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancer. “No group in history has combined gold standard tissue collection techniques with the most extensive multi-omics analysis, with long term clinical outcomes all analyzed using industry leading AI technologies with a global reach. It is only by connecting each of these elements that the next layer of cancer’s secrets will be revealed.”
Onco AI-Med members are also supporting the creation of an educational program sponsored by Georgetown University and Oxford University, known as the Precision Oncology Web Education Resource, or POWER. This collaborative is addressing the widening knowledge gap between oncology researchers and clinicians caused by the speed of discoveries and innovation in precision medicine technologies, according to Indivumed.
“It is fantastic to see how 18 years of standardized tissue and clinical data collection to obtain reliable and comparable biological research data has turned into this global initiative to understand the complexity of cancer,” said Hartmut Juhl, MD, CEO and founder of Indivumed. “Indivumed has evolved from providing high-quality tissue and data collection services to becoming a leading cancer database with innovative bioinformatic and AI-capacity. Together with our clinical partners in the Onco AI-Med alliance we hope to decipher cancer complexity in each individual patient with the ultimate goal of curing cancer.”
The Onco AI-Med advisory board expects to publish its first findings in the coming months, the group said.
