- American Cancer Society annual report shows largest single-year drop in cancer deaths ever reported
- Doctors attribute precision medicine with playing significant role in decline
- POAI leading player in precision medicine, initiated groundbreaking Cancer Quest 2020 project
A new American Cancer Society report bodes well for Predictive Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ: POAI), a company focused on applying artificial intelligence to help equip players in personalized medicine and drug discovery. American Cancer Society’s annual ‘Facts & Figures 2020’ report shows the largest single-year drop in cancer deaths ever reported (http://nnw.fm/twL1W). The 2.2% drop occurred from 2016 to 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available.
The report notes that the decline in deaths from lung cancer drove the record drop, and that the decline was driven in large part by precision medicine. While lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer death, deaths from lung cancer have declined by 51% from 1990 to 2017 among men and 26% from 2002 to 2017 among women. In response to the report, doctors at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer in Buffalo, New York, attribute precision medicine with playing a significant role in the decline (http://nnw.fm/x15Cb).
Roswell Park’s Dr. Carl Morrison described the impact that precision medicine has had on the health industry’s fight against cancer. For example, there are at least 10 to 15 subtypes of lung cancers that doctors can treat now, which patients couldn’t receive treatment for previously. “Ten years ago, you stopped at that diagnosis,” Morrison said in an article. “Today you don’t. No longer can you just use the word lung cancer. You have to clarify what types of lung cancer it is, and then when you know what type of lung cancer it is, you know what specific therapy that you can treat that lung cancer with and that is in essence, precision medicine.”
As precision medicine continues to be embraced by the health community, Predictive Oncology’s database shows potential to fill a critical void: equipping oncological and pharmaceutical industries with tools to help fight ovarian cancer – a notoriously fast-moving and aggressive cancer type. Last year, POAI initiated its Cancer Quest 2020 project, which includes sequencing ovarian cancers and building the largest ovarian cancer multi-omic database in the world. Through this project, the company hopes to provide the pharmaceutical industry critical tools to help speed up the development of new drugs and provide more personalized and effective therapeutic choices.
Predictive Oncology’s subsidiary, Helomics, is playing a key role in the groundbreaking project. Helomics currently has an estimated 150,000 cases on its molecular information platform – 38,000 of which are specific to ovarian cancer. This invaluable scientific asset positions POAI as a leader in providing the critical molecular information needed for more effective patient treatments and new drug discovery in a much timelier manner than others in the precision-medicine space.
As part of the Cancer Quest 2020 project, Predictive Oncology has also signed a collaborative agreement with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)-Magee Women’s Hospital to establish a data- and artificial-intelligence-driven approach to treating ovarian cancer. Based on the agreement, the partnership is designed to validate the significant value of using AI-powered decision-making for identifying specific treatments on specific genotypes to help oncologists predict clinical outcomes for ovarian cancer patients.
Helomics has begun sequencing retrospective ovarian cancer cases from the UPMC-Magee collaboration and analyzing the mutations in the tumor (genome) and the expression of genes (transcriptome) in order to build a comprehensive multi-omic picture of the tumor. That information can then be brought together with Helomics’ data set of drug-response profiles to build an AI-driven predictive model of ovarian cancer. This disruptive work is designed to lead to continued drops in cancer deaths of all types.
Predictive Oncology began as a joint venture between Skyline Medical, another of POIA’s subsidiaries, and Helomics. The company is ideally positioned to harness the power of artificial intelligence and work with the pharmaceutical, diagnostic and biotech industries to develop highly customizable assessment methods for cancer patients.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Predictive-Oncology.com
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to POAI are available in the company’s newsroom at http://nnw.fm/POAI
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