We asked George Sledge, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Caris Life Sciences, to share the most game-changing things the company has come up with to date.
For example, advances in AI-powered diagnostics/liquid biopsies that are accelerating more personalized care decisions for patients. Caris Life Sciences has applied cutting-edge artificial intelligence to important clinical questions that help patients with cancer.
“Two important examples: At this year’s ASCO annual meeting, working in collaboration with National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) investigators, we used Hematoxylin and Eosin-stained slides taken at time of initial diagnosis to address the important question of which patients are at continuing risk for late recurrence,” Sledge said.
“Our AI-based model, applied to the NSABP B-42 trial, effectively separates populations at lower and higher risk of late recurrence (out to 15 years after diagnosis). This technology has potential global applicability.”
“We have also, through our GPSai algorithm, demonstrated our ability to use artificial intelligence-based models to identify the tissue of origin in cases of cancer of unknown primary (CUP), thereby allowing patients to receive appropriate targeted therapies for their advanced cancer.”
“As a consequence of this analysis, we’ve also identified a population of patients whose tumors were misdiagnosed using standard pathology. This has allowed us to appropriately identify them, thereby assisting in delivering the right therapy to the right patient, a life-changing event.”
Can you briefly run us through the progress Caris has made just in the last four years – for example, your real-world data analyses showing how treatment outcome and biomarker expression can vary by race, age, and tumor subtype?
“Caris Life Sciences has seen explosive growth in molecular diagnostic testing in the last four years. Our data involves over a half-million tumor samples that have undergone comprehensive genomic testing, using whole-exome (DNA) and whole-transcriptome (RNA) assays, as well as an extensive immunohistochemistry testing,” he said.
“The sheer volume of this testing, combined with clinical information obtained from both claims data and electronic health records, has enabled us to address a substantial number of questions crucial to understanding the biology and treatment of a wide range of human cancers.”
“For instance, last year Caris published 79 peer-reviewed papers developed in combination with academic partners through our Precision Oncology Alliance, and at the ASCO Annual Meeting we had 41 presentations on a wide range of topics.”
“The size of our datasets allows us to examine important questions regarding healthcare disparities. For instance, in collaboration with Robert Hsu of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and other academic investigators, we were able to demonstrate the biologic underpinnings of why African American and Hispanic women may have worse outcomes in early-stage breast cancer, related to differences in the tumor microenvironment of these women’s cancer.”
