4baseCare, an Illumina Accelerator backed precision oncology start-up and ACTREC (Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research, and Education in Cancer) – Tata Memorial Centre have signed a collaboration agreement for an AI-driven clinical interpretation platform, ClinOme. The collaboration aims at making an indigenous platform to generate data insights and simplified reports to guide oncologists with personalized treatment options for treating cancer patients.
ClinOme is a graphical user interface (GUI) based automated tool developed by senior scientists and clinicians from ACTREC & Tata Memorial Hospital by Dr Amit Dutt, Dr Pratik Chandrani, and Dr Kumar Prabhash for analysis of raw NGS data followed by comprehensive clinical report generation. It automates quality check, primary, secondary and tertiary analysis of raw NGS data followed by report generation that can be easily comprehended by the clinicians. It provides easy to interpret categorization of genomic alterations along with approved and experimental therapeutic options for each responsive and resistant genotype-drug combination.
Dr Amit Dutt, principal investigator, scientist, ACTREC -Tata Memorial Hospital, says, “Patient-to-patient variation in treatment response as observed routinely in clinics, suggests that personal targeting of cancer, based on tumor molecular profiles, is necessary. The ClinOme tool and our collaborative work with 4baseCare is likely to benefit large numbers of oncologists in a democratic manner who could take advantage of artificial intelligence-based automation of NGS data analysis to decide an appropriate therapeutic regimen tailored to the patient’s genomic alterations. This is a huge step forward to scale the digital curation towards precision medicine.”
4baseCare having an exclusive worldwide license to ClinOme plans to invest significant time and resources to further develop and enhance the functionality and precision of ClinOme.
“We are very happy to associate with ACTREC_TMC to introduce ClinOme. The objective of this collaboration is to improve the treatment process and enhancing patients’ quality of life. This partnership is a first step towards developing an advanced ecosystem where researchers and clinicians practice together, leading to the development of a solution which has immediate translational benefits for the patients,” says Kshitij Rishi, chief operating officer 4baseCare.
“We at 4baseCare are excited to build upon the remarkable research-based product developed by ACTREC-TMC as a robust AI-driven platform to support the oncologist(s) in their clinical decision making,” says Hitesh Goswami, chief executive officer, 4baseCare.
This collaboration will set a great precedence for Industry-academia collaboration towards translational research. It will also be a huge step towards personalization of treatment for Indian cancer patients and aligns with the vision of both ACTREC-TMC and 4baseCare of improving quality of life and treatment of cancer patients of the country.
“Genomic testing has become important in the management of cancer. NGS is emerging as a comprehensive solution for genomic testing. It a complex process where the bioinformatics pipeline is a very important component. ClinOme provides a very useful indigenous solution in this area,” says Dr Kumar Prabhash, Professor and Medical Oncologist, Tata Memorial Hospital.
The output of ClinOme analysis consists of a report with detailed patient-centric genotype to help design informed therapeutic option. The output report also consists of links to the specific ongoing clinical trials, gene-wise coverage statistics, and allelic frequency of the genomic variants.
“While genomics data analysis is a challenge, evidence-based therapeutic inference is altogether another challenge. ClinOme addresses both of the challenges using a combination of genomics best practices and artificial-intelligence powered evidence-based therapeutic inference,” says Dr Pratik Chanarani, scientific officer, ACTREC-Tata Memorial Hospital.
4baseCare is the 1st company from Asia Pacific to be backed by Global genomics leader Illumina through their Illumina Accelerator Program. It develops affordable and accessible precision oncology solutions using genomics and digital health technology to personalize patient care in Oncology.
4baseCare has developed custom gene panels that allow oncologists to characterize and understand the molecular signature of individuals’ cancer patient’s tumor tissue. Based on 4baseCare’s reports, the oncologists can then tailor and personalize treatment for their patients. 4baseCare has undertaken one of the largest cohort study of cancer patients to develop first of its kind Indian population-specific gene panel in collaboration with clinical partners from AIIMS, ACTREC-TMC, St John’s Research Institute (SJRI), and Fortis (Bangalore).
The origins of the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) are rooted in the Indian Cancer Research Center (ICRC), which was renamed the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) and amalgamated with the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), creating the first comprehensive cancer center in India – the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), an autonomous grant-in-aid institution of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India.
ACTREC started with a basic research division focus on providing novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of cancer. The Tata Memorial Centre’s mission is to provide comprehensive cancer care to one and all through its motto of excellence in services, education, and research.
