On May 19, 2020 Deep Lens, a software company reported on a groundbreaking approach to faster recruitment of the best-suited cancer patients to clinical trials, has integrated proprietary molecular data parsing and management technology into the company’s award-winning clinical trial screening and enrollment platform, VIPER (Press release, Deep Lens, MAY 19, 2020, View Source [SID1234558291]). This breakthrough integration will enable cancer care teams, clinical trial sponsors, and trial coordinators to immediately and automatically match patients based on the genetic profile of their cancers to the best precision therapies and oncology clinical trials.
Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:
Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing
Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!
The company worked with the University of Miami Office of Technology Transfer to exclusively license the technology. A team from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and UHealth Information Technology developed an engine to leverage new ways of consuming and normalizing molecular genetic test results from companies, such as Caris Life Sciences, Foundation Medicine, Guardant Health, NeoGenomics, Tempus, and more, to automate and expedite the patient screening process.
"Our office facilitates transfer of university innovations for the benefit of the university community and the public," said Bin Yan, Ph.D., J.D., Director of the Office of Technology Transfer. "So, it was a natural fit to work with Deep Lens and integrate our two differentiated technologies to solve a real problem in clinical trial recruitment: limited time and resources for physicians and care teams."
In the past, the genetic test results were sent to healthcare providers, where a trained specialist or physician would analyze the results for therapy decisions. But, clinical trial coordinators often do not have access to this data or the ability to extract information from it when matching patients to clinical trials, leading to inconsistencies in the screening process and missed opportunities to leverage the data. Now, with integration into the VIPER platform, molecular test results from any lab vendor, across all patients can be quickly searched and easily analyzed by cancer care teams and clinical trial coordinators immediately and automatically match patients to the best precision-based clinical trials available.
"Deep Lens’ VIPER has already made a big improvement to the patient screening process for our precision trials," said Jim Langford, Vice President of Clinical Operations, Aivita Biomedical in Irvine, California. "With the addition of automated molecular-based patient matching, we see VIPER giving us much greater granularity into how we work with our provider sites to drive greater patient engagement."
The collaboration between Deep Lens and the University of Miami not only provides Deep Lens with additional, differentiated technology in precision medicine but establishes the University of Miami as a collaboration partner for future genomics technology development and project work.
"Integrating this molecular data parsing and management technology into VIPER and continuing to work with University of Miami on integrating future genomics advancements will ensure that we have the leading and most up-to-date information and technologies," stated TJ Bowen, Ph.D., co-founder and Chief Scientist at Deep Lens. "Now, cancer care teams, clinical trial sponsors, and trial coordinators can leverage an AI-enabled workflow platform that aggregates all relevant data sources for even faster automation and improved patient matching to increase clinical trial enrollment."
Patient recruitment for clinical trials remains a time-intensive, costly barrier to the execution of drug development programs. More than 14,000 oncology clinical trials are actively recruiting patients; yet estimates put the rate of participation as low as three percent of potential trial candidates, which can lead to enrollment delays of months, if not years.
"With this new functionality, VIPER will facilitate even greater patient access to cutting-edge treatments. By identifying eligible patients for clinical trials based on their digital and molecular biomarkers, VIPER is exactly what is needed to improve trial enrollment numbers," said David Braxton, M.D., Head of Molecular Pathology at a California cancer center that uses the VIPER platform. "Patients deserve access to the most promising treatments and getting access should not be a burden for care teams and patients."