Kronos Bio, Inc. (Nasdaq: KRON), a company dedicated to transforming the lives of those affected by cancer, and Tempus, a leader in artificial intelligence and precision medicine, today announced a multi-year collaboration that provides Kronos Bio with access to Tempus’ real-world genomic and transcriptomic data and data analytics tools.
Under the agreement, Kronos Bio will have access to a number of precision medicine tools, including Tempus’ modeling lab, which houses a growing repository of molecularly profiled organoids. Access to such data and tools will help Kronos Bio accelerate the preclinical and clinical development of its current and future portfolio, by for example, using organoid models to generate biomarker hypotheses that can be tested in the clinic or in virtual molecularly defined patient cohorts drawn from Tempus’ extensive data sets.
The collaboration builds on an earlier agreement announced in February under which Tempus is performing molecular characterization of tumor samples from patients enrolled in Kronos Bio’s Phase 1/2 clinical study of the company’s CDK9 inhibitor KB-0742. Tempus will retrospectively sequence and analyze these patient samples to assess the relationship between MYC copy number, MYC expression levels and clinical response. Tempus will also explore a path to developing a companion diagnostic.
The expanded relationship leverages Kronos Bio’s deep expertise in transcriptional regulation and Tempus’ next-generation-sequencing capabilities, as well as drawing on each company’s computational biology capabilities. Kronos Bio also has the option to join Tempus’ TIME Trial® Network, which supports rapid patient identification, site activation and enrollment of select clinical trials.
“With a shared commitment to improving patient outcomes, we are building upon our existing work with Kronos Bio to advance the company’s portfolio of clinical programs, including lanraplenib and KB-0742,” said Marc Yoskowitz, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Life Sciences at Tempus. “We look forward to harnessing the strength of our entire platform to support the discovery and development of novel cancer therapeutics.”
The capabilities provided under the expanded agreement offer Kronos Bio the opportunity to access real-world data to further refine current understanding of transcription regulatory networks (TRNs), which could help accelerate clinical development.
“This partnership will bring together Kronos Bio’s knowledge and experience with transcriptional regulatory networks and Tempus’ sequencing expertise and exceptional data analytics tools and organoid models,” said Jorge DiMartino, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer and executive vice president, Clinical Development at Kronos Bio. “We are looking forward to working together now and in the future, as we continue to progress our current clinical candidates, test rational combinations, and bring forward new ones, with the goal of getting medicines to patients as quickly as possible.”
About Tempus
Tempus is a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. With one of the world’s largest libraries of matched clinical and molecular data, and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful, Tempus enables physicians to make near real-time, data-driven decisions to deliver personalized patient care and in parallel facilitates discovery, development and delivery of optimal therapeutics. The goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as the company gathers more data. For more information, visit tempus.com.
About Kronos Bio, Inc.
Kronos Bio is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering and developing therapies that seek to transform the lives of those affected by cancer. The company focuses on targeting dysregulated transcription factors and the regulatory networks within cells that drive cancerous growth. Kronos Bio’s lead investigational therapy is entospletinib, a selective inhibitor targeting spleen tyrosine kinase (SYK) in development for the frontline treatment of NPM1-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The company is also developing KB-0742, an oral inhibitor of cyclin dependent kinase 9 (CDK9), for the treatment of MYC-amplified solid tumors.
Kronos Bio is based in San Mateo, Calif., and has a research facility in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, visit www.kronosbio.com or follow the company on LinkedIn.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The press release, in some cases, uses terms such as “will,” “present,” “anticipated,” “ongoing,” “to announce” or other words that convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Kronos Bio’s intentions, beliefs, projections, outlook, analyses or current expectations concerning, among other things: the collaboration with Tempus, including Kronos Bio’s belief that access to data and tools provided under the Tempus agreement will help Kronos Bio accelerate the preclinical and clinical development of its current and future portfolio, other expected benefits of the collaboration, and work to be performed under the collaboration; and other statements that are not historical fact. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of various risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation: risks inherent in the clinical development of novel therapeutics; risks related to third-party performance; and risks associated with the sufficiency of Kronos Bio’s cash resources and need for additional capital. These and other risks are described in greater detail in Kronos Bio’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including under the heading “Risk Factors” in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, filed with the SEC on August 12, 2021. Any forward-looking statements that are made in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release and are based on management’s assumptions and estimates as of such date. Except as required by law, Kronos Bio assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release.