Culmination Bio, a new Intermountain Health Company, and Cofactor Genomics, a predictive diagnostic immunotherapy company, announced a partnership to leverage samples and data from one of the largest biobanks in the country to fuel the development of Cofactor Genomics’ OncoPrism test for 11 cancers.
The objective of the partnership is to build biomarkers for cancers being studied in the national PREDAPT (Predicting Immunotherapy Efficacy From Analysis of Pre-treatment Tumor Biopsies) clinical trial. The companies’ relationship is initially focused on studying OncoPrism in cancers of the head, neck, and lung, and will soon expand into nine other indications for which the study is approved, including triple-negative breast, cervical, colorectal, esophageal, gastric, kidney, liver, and urothelial cancers. Early readouts for the head and neck cancer biomarker show that Cofactor’s approach is twice as accurate as the PD-L1 biomarker in finding the subset of patients who respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Cofactor’s OncoPrism assay is a laboratory-developed test powered by a sophisticated, multidimensional immune biomarker built to predict which cancer patients are likely responders to monotherapy of immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as Keytruda.
Clinical trials for new cancer drugs have proliferated in the last few years, but only a subset of patients successfully responds to these newer classes of immunotherapies that harness the patient’s immune response to fight cancer.
Cofactor’s OncoPrism assay is a laboratory-developed test powered by a sophisticated, multidimensional immune biomarker built to predict which cancer patients are likely responders to monotherapy of immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as Keytruda.
“The goal of this partnership is to innovate and build predictive diagnostics that match the right patients to the right treatments, fulfilling the promise of precision medicine,” says Lincoln Nadauld, MD, PhD, CEO of Culmination Bio, and former vice president and chief of precision health at Intermountain Health. “With access to over 4.5 million biological samples uniquely tied to decades of clinical outcome data, Culmination Bio is in a unique position to help Cofactor in the development of its novel genomic diagnostic OncoPrism.”
“Closing the precision medicine gap in immunotherapy requires a collaborative effort from all stakeholders involved in a patient’s care plan, including test developers,” says Cofactor Genomics CEO Jarret Glasscock, PhD. “We are committed to seeing innovation move from laboratory to clinic, and are proud to be working with the forward-thinking team at Culmination Bio who have been at the forefront of leveraging their considerable data and sample assets to fuel innovation.”
Featured image: Cofactor Genomics
