Nucleai, a global provider in pathology-based biomarker discovery, and Debiopharm (www.debiopharm.com), a Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company specializing in drug development, announced that they have entered into a long-term collaboration to leverage Nucleai's artificial intelligence (AI) -powered biomarker research & discovery platform for one of Debiopharm's clinical stage oncology assets.
Having become one of Debiopharm's investment portfolio companies in 2020 (Series A), Nucleai's pathology-based platform analyzes tissue images using computer vision and machine learning methods to model the tumor and the immune system's spatial characteristics, creating unique and specific histological biomarkers that can predict patient response. These biomarkers allow further stratification of responder/non-responder patient populations, improve the success rate of clinical trials, and shorten time-to-market for pharmaceutical treatments. To develop their platform, Nucleai leverages proprietary datasets of pathology images and clinical data from leading hospitals and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in Israel and the United States.
Debiopharm has multiple therapeutic development programs in oncology that may benefit from this digital pathology biomarker and imaging platform, enabling better patient selection and improved clinical performance. Ultimately this approach could result in better, more personalized therapeutic choices for patients. The agreement includes an initial installment to Nucleai followed by success-based milestone payments should Debiopharm integrate Nucleai's biomarkers in its clinical studies and further develop them as companion diagnostics.
"We are delighted to launch our first project with Nucleai in order to explore the application of their cutting-edge AI technology to unravel complex biomarkers and better define the patient population benefitting from the therapies we develop," expressed Franck Brichory, Director Personalized Medicine at Debiopharm.
Tom Gibbs, Director at Debiopharm, added, "This is a great example of how Debiopharm can work with companies that we have invested in through our strategic Digital Health investment fund."
"Clinical assets paired to biomarkers are known to improve the success rate of clinical studies. The future of biomarker discovery and development lies in integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, broad and rich data, and biological understanding. We are thrilled to announce this third major collaboration with pharma to research, discover and develop new biomarkers for their oncology clinical assets," explained Avi Veidman, co-founder and CEO of Nucleai.
