GEDiCube and Cyclomics Join Forces to Further Liquid Biopsy for Cancer Detection

GEDiCube, an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) company wholly owned as a subsidiary of Renovaro, today announced it has executed a binding letter of intent to acquire 75% of Cyclomics, a cancer diagnostic company. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work in good faith to draft a definitive agreement.

The companies intend, after closing, to integrate portfolios in an effort to help empower AI technology to detect cancer and other diseases as early as possible.

GEDiCube’s platform uses AI-technology running on Nvidia’s latest chips and stacks genetic and protein expression on top of DNA mutation for accurate cancer detection. The company focuses on developing advanced diagnostic and monitoring tests that use “multi-omics” and integrate data from each stage of genetic expression. This multi-omic approach includes genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, fragmentomics, and metabolomics. Its AI engine will also integrate medical images as part of the Nvidia Inception Program.

Cyclomics has developed a diagnostic method for monitoring early cancer recurrence called CyclomicsSeq. The method uses a circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection assay based on “Oxford Nanopore sequencing which delivers fast, low-cost, and point-of-care sequencing,” according to the company. ctDNA is a tumor-derived fragmented DNA in the bloodstream that is not associated with cells.

CyclomicsSeq, compared to other available ctDNA methods, ensures high detection accuracy as small as a single ctDNA molecule in the blood. The diagnostic solution is part of a diagnostic kit which has been licensed to Oxford Nanopore, an RNA/DNA sequencing platform company.

“Cyclomics’ Omni-Omic 4th generation technology, we believe, will disrupt the cancer diagnostics market and clinical practice by enabling fast and reliable results and delivering superior performance to standard radiological and physical examination alone,” according to the press release announcing the letter of intent.

Currently, radiological imaging is the standard in detecting tumor recurrence, but it reportedly suffers from sensitivity and specificity issues, often revealing relapsed cancer after its progressed to a state where treatment is ineffective. Cyclomics’ CyclomicsSeq platform, comparatively, is expected to enable reliable, fast, and ultra-sensitive early/recurrence cancer detection.

“That is achieved by detecting ctDNA, a reliable biomarker for determining the presence or absence of cancer, which can be non-invasively obtained from a blood sample (liquid biopsy),” the release wrote. “The novel approach to cancer detection is based on a single vial of blood and multi-dimensional profiling. Cyclomics applies a wide multi-signal/multi-omics approach to a very low amount of tumor ctDNA.”

Additionally, the company has already developed an early detection technology called CyclomicsSeq TP53, an in vitro diagnostic kit integrating innovative sequencing methods with analysis software. Of the patients diagnosed with head neck cancer, 90% carry specific oncogenic DNA mutations in the gene TP53. CyclomicsSeq TP53 can be applied to cancer types harboring the gene.

The combined companies, upon closing, intend to accelerate entry into the cancer monitoring market and integrate Cyclomics whole genome data into GEDiCube’s AI/machine learning platform.

“There is enormous power in applying AI to multiple omics data layers that can be detected from a vial of blood from every patient with cancer,” said Coenraad van Kalken, MD, PhD, CEO of GEDiCube. “I believe that integrating Cyclomics into GEDiCube will allow us to gain greater accuracy and widespread Omni-omic measurements through next-generation sequencing and enter the cancer monitoring market this year. I consider that to be a significant step towards bringing early detection of cancer to its inflection point.”