A Match Made in Big Data Heaven?

By marrying artificial intelligence with big data, two firms are improving patient access to cancer trials.

Nancy Crotti

A San Francisco artificial intelligence startup and a precision-medicine diagnostics company are teaming up to match cancer patients with clinical trials.

The matching process will be based not only on patients' biomarkers and genomic data, but also on all of the unstructured data in their medical history and files. The AI company, Mendel Health, can upload all of that information in a HIPAA-compliant manner, and extract the applicable data to make the match.

The process will continuously match a patient's data with emerging clinical trials, according to Panna Sharma, CEO of Cancer Genetics Inc. of Rutherford, NJ, which is partnering with Mendel Health on the endeavor. Cancer Genetics does pharmacogenomic testing for health systems, and for biopharma and biotech companies that do oncology-focused trials.

As cancer treatments become more targeted, physicians don't have the time to search among the hundreds of clinical trials available to find the perfect match for their patients, Sharma told Qmed in a phone interview. Plus, enrollment in clinical trials remains low. According to the National Cancer Institute, less than 5% of patients with cancer participate in clinical trials. Research!America, a medical research advocacy group, found in a national survey of more than 1,000 patients that fewer than 7 of 10 healthcare providers talk about clinical trials or research, while only 54% of patients believe the care they are receiving is based on the best or most recent advancements from research.

"This is where AI solves the problem," Sharma said. "This is a great, great marriage of what we're taking from our standpoint--the treasure trove of genetic and biomarker data that we generate every day for patients--and making it more actionable."

Mendel Health CEO Karim Galil, MD, founded the company after searching in vain for a clinical trial for his aunt, who had brain cancer, only to find one a week after she died.

Sharma had been eyeing healthcare AI and big data companies for a potential partnership for about a year before he found a couple that were patient-focused. He liked what Mendel Health was doing, and wanted to help shape its product offering. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed. In 2016, Mendel raised an undisclosed sum from SOSV (Princeton, NJ) and its accelerator, Indie Bio, according to Crunchbase.

Cancer Genetics and Mendel are joining a growing field of AI-fueled patient matching, including the powerhouse QuintilesIMS. Quintile's Precision Enrollment network allows investigators tobrowse a menu of studies to determine if there are patients matching a given trial. Once a patient is identified, the process is designed to open the study at that site within 21 days.

Cancer Genetics and Mendel will match patients to trials based on their medical needs, and will narrow the choices by patient ZIP code, Sharma said. By the end of this year, he hopes that every test result generated by Cancer Genetics' laboratory will automatically provide information about the right trial for each patient. The technology also has the potential to reduce costs for hospitals and patients, as the pharma companies sponsoring the trials generally will pick up the tab.

"Other patient-matching trial companies are further along, but are they going to fit our needs like these guys?" he said. "I'm excited to work with a startup, and we can help mold their solution to what can fit our business needs best."

Nancy Crotti is a contributor to Qmed.

[Image courtesy of Pixabay]