SimBioSys, a company specialising in precision oncology and General Inception, a global company igniter, today announce a strategic partnership that aims to significantly reduce oncology drug development times and cut development costs by using AI and biophysical modelling to better understand unique tumour spatial biophysical characteristics.
PhenoScope, SimBioSys’ proprietary technology and service, can analyse vast fields of multi-modal data, generating novel insights — including unique spatial biophysical insights in 4-dimension space, for cancer drug discovery and development which are not apparent by looking at one type of data alone.
Drawing on SimBioSys’ data of more than 12,000 individual cancer patient profiles in 33 solid cancers, as well as a virtual tumour bank of more than 20,000 spatially resolved tumours, PhenoScope can be used in drug development to predict personalised patient response over time. This includes drug binding and metabolic response, as well as dosing capabilities across every scenario and delivery.
GI, founded in 2020, is a venture studio with a portfolio of over 40 companies, 10 of which are therapeutics, to which it expects to add up to eight new therapeutics every year for the next five years.
PhenoScope will enable ... spotting novel biomarkers for new drugs and identifying the patients most likely to benefit
PhenoScope will enable a deep phenotyping of tumour biology and identification of sets of biomarkers with high predictive value, providing a varied toolkit that is useful across the whole spectrum of drug development; from spotting novel biomarkers for new drugs, to identifying the patients most likely to benefit, guiding on indication selection and combination selection, to identifying the likely optimal therapeutic dose before a clinical trial starts – known as ‘precision dosing’.
Better patient dosing will not only increase efficacy, but most importantly reduce unwanted side effects that impact that patient significantly and adds cost to the healthcare system.
The growing importance of this is reflected in the US Food and Drug Administration’s Oncology Center of Excellence’s Project Optimus, an initiative to reform dose optimisation and dose selection paradigm in oncology drug development.
Drug development in oncology is at high levels, with more than 2,000 products currently under development and drug trial starts up 22% in 2022 from 2018. Emerging biopharma companies account for 71% of this pipeline. Spending on cancer medicines is expected to reach USD $375bn globally by 2027, up from $196Bn in 2022.[1]
Venkat Reddy, Chief Scientific Officer of General Inception, said: “This collaboration marks a significant milestone in the pursuit of more effective, personalised cancer therapies, as all new oncology drug incubations under General Inception will be able to use SimBioSys’ PhenoScope platform and drug development services. More efficient target identification, credentialing, and clinical positioning will significantly reduce the time it takes to get to the clinic and improve efficacy through patient stratification, precision medicine approaches and other means. Under this agreement, General Inception’s incubated companies will have the ability to accelerate their pipelines thanks to these advanced capabilities.”
