AI Can Map Entire Patient Journey in Precision Oncology, From Clinical Trial Matching to Drug Matching

In 2023, a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug matching technology is being launched by Massive Bio to help oncologists proactively identify more cancer treatment options for their patients, including recently approved drugs and active clinical trials. Additionally, the AI can help oncologists match patients with the most appropriate treatment option for them using information such as medical history and genomics.

“We believe there’s so much more that can be done to advance the field of oncology,” said Selin Kurnaz, co-founder and CEO of Massive Bio, in a press release. “We want to reverse engineer the process using real-time clinical data—not outdated financial claims data—to match the right patients with the right treatments at the right time.”

The AI works by sorting through millions of clinical datasets and matching the right clinical and drug information to the patient’s health care needs. In turn, oncologists will not have to manually review/research treatment options and each aspect of a patient’s datapoints. Further, clinical teams can provide more precise therapies based on the data.

In 2022, approximately 1.9 million people were diagnosed with cancer in the United States. While the past 5 years have seen 104 novel oncology treatments become globally available— with 30 of those treatments launched in 2021 and a solid portion using precision biomarkers—many patients face access barriers, limited understanding, and inappropriate testing result usage that prevents them from receiving the best, most precise treatment for their tumor type.

Nevertheless, AI and biomarker testing is increasing in the field of oncology. Nearly 55% of all cancer clinical trials now use biomarkers, according to a recent oncology report. However, many patients are not receiving the most effective personalized treatments due to challenges related to integrating biomarker testing in the clinical care setting.

Issues such as operational inefficiencies, limited understanding of biomarker strategies, inappropriate testing result usage, and access barriers, can get patients lost during their health care journey along the precision oncology pathway. A large dataset of over 500,000 patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the United States shows this. Approximately 64% could have, but did not, benefit from a personalized treatment appropriate for their disease.

Described as “a breath of fresh air,” Kurnaz presents AI as an effective tool for addressing these challenges in the oncology sector. Further, co-founder, CTO, and COO of Massive Bio, Cagatay Culcuoglu, explained that AI technology can also help alleviate the financial burden of generic, non-precision-based therapies.

The drug matching technology can also help biotech and pharmaceutical companies better identify which patients and physicians need the latest drugs in order to improve efficiency as they plan their market output and streamline their go-to market approaches for each drug.

“With the advent of big data, genomics, analytics and real-time insights, the oncology community needs to reimagine cancer patient care, clinical trial design, and the entire drug discovery process,” Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, co-founder, and chief medical officer at Massive Bio, said in the press release.

Massive Bio is set to launch the drug matching technology in the first 6 months of 2023. It will be more widely available by the end of 2023.

“At the end of the day, we want to ‘amazonize’ the entire patient journey which includes patient identification, clinical decision support and last mile,” Kurnaz said in the press release. “This allows scale and a data-driven approach to finding the best treatments, including FDA-approved drugs and active clinical trials for patients and oncologists.”

Reference

Massive Bio. Massive Bio Announces Plans to Expand AI Use in Oncology, from Clinical Trial Matching to Drug Matching and Beyond. Business Wire. News Release. January 4, 2023. Accessed on January 5, 2023. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230104005314/en