Tempus and Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center Expand Genomic Collaboration
Published in Yahoo! Finance – April 27, 2017
Tempus, a technology company focused on helping doctors personalize cancer treatment by collecting, sorting and analyzing clinical and molecular data, has formed a second collaboration with Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center to improve and personalize treatment for patients diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
AML is a cancer originating in the bone marrow that can progress quickly and is often fatal if not treated appropriately. While a great deal is known about the molecular fingerprint of the various types of AML, work remains to be done to maximize the clinical value of this genomic information.
As part of the research collaboration, Tempus will analyze data for approximately 650 AML patients who were treated at the Abramson Cancer Center and generate additional genomic data for a large subset of those patients. The goal is to help cancer specialists and research teams uncover novel patterns that can predict how patients will respond to treatment. Over time, this should lead to better patient outcomes.
“Collecting genomic information for patients diagnosed with AML is an important step in our efforts to unlock the mysteries of this disease. In order to have an impact on the thousands of people diagnosed with AML, we need to determine why certain patients positively respond to treatment and others do not, which the Tempus analytics platform will help determine,” said Dr. Martin Carroll, the principal scientist at Penn who is leading this research effort.
This project follows an earlier collaboration between Tempus and the Abramson Cancer Center, focused on identifying which immunotherapies are most likely to be effective for pancreatic and melanoma cancer patients.
“In order to collectively impact the lives of patients who are battling cancer today and who will unfortunately be diagnosed in the future, it is imperative that we collect enough data to learn from patients who have already fought this disease,” said Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO of Tempus. “Our platform synthesizes and analyzes clinical, molecular, and outcome data and allows physicians and researchers to access vast amount of historic data in real time as they seek to treat patients and explore new opportunities for discovery.”
The Abramson Cancer Center is one of only 47 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the U.S. designated by the National Cancer Institute. The clinical program at the center sees over 90,000 outpatient visits, over 11,800 inpatient discharges, and provides over 37,000 chemotherapy treatments, and more than 66,000 radiation treatments.
About Tempus:
Tempus is a technology company that is building the world’s largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful. We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine learning platform. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data. For more information, visit tempus.com and follow us on Facebook (Tempus Labs) and Twitter (@TempusLabs).
