On February 16, 2023 M2GEN, a bioinformatics company accelerating discoveries in oncology research through industry-leading data and analytics, and Zephyr AI, Inc. ("Zephyr AI"), a company building novel transparent AI to address unmet needs across the full spectrum of precision medicine – from prevention to treatment – to improve patient’s lives, reported a multi-year strategic partnership that will accelerate drug discovery and expanded use investigations for cancer treatments (Press release, M2Gen, FEB 16, 2023, View Source [SID1234627310]).

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This collaboration leverages Zephyr AI’s industry-leading machine learning platform, and M2GEN’s unmatched real-world data set (RWD) to create a best-in-class oncology discovery product. In this partnership, M2GEN will license its expansive RWD to Zephyr AI, providing the latter with access to the richest clinicogenomic data set available in oncology today. In return, Zephyr AI will become a bioinformatics partner for M2GEN, providing the company with AI and machine learning capabilities to enhance their products and services. Together, this partnership will yield critical insights enabling both companies to discover new cancer treatments and expanded use cases, better identify new targets, and improve clinical trial design.

"Cancer accounts for approximately 1 in 6 deaths globally. Even more troubling, by 2040, cancer is projected to claim an estimated 16.3 million lives around the world," said Grant Verstandig, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Zephyr AI. "The pairing of M2GEN’s extensive data set with Zephyr’s powerful analytical and bioinformatics capabilities allows us an extraordinary opportunity to change this narrative by enabling us to discover new uses for existing drugs and drug combinations; unearth novel drug targets; and inform the design of new medications. This partnership not only holds the potential to chart a new era of drug discovery and precision medicine, but to save innumerable lives."

M2GEN is the only bioinformatics company that has lifetime, patient-consented longitudinal clinical data, coupled with whole exome (WES) and whole transcriptome (WTS) sequencing, for both tumor and germline data. The company has lifetime data access from more than 350,000 patients, making it the largest patient-consented oncology research network of its kind. M2GEN’s data will be integrated into Zephyr’s trademark Vulnerability Network Method, which leverages groundbreaking algorithms to classify tumors and reveal new targets for drug discovery, label expansion, and precision care.
"Collaboration is core to everything we do at M2GEN, and this opportunity symbolizes the power of working in concert to accelerate the development of cancer treatments and cures," said Jim Gabriele, CEO of M2GEN. "Our data have been used successfully for indication expansion of many pharmaceutical products, including traditional treatments and immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy. By joining forces with Zephyr AI, we will continue to transform cancer discovery, expedite research, and bring the right treatments to market, sooner, for countless patients with cancer."