Tempus, a leader in artificial intelligence and precision medicine, today announced a strategic collaboration to develop a companion diagnostic (CDx) test with A2 Biotherapeutics for its new therapy targeting patients with Loss of Heterozygosity (LOH). It is anticipated that this collaboration could also provide a platform for the development of further CDx tests for A2’s other clinical development programs, which is part of its innovative approach to accelerate drug development.
A2, a biotechnology company developing innovative cell therapies for cancer patients with solid tumors, is collaborating with Tempus to validate its leading xT sequencing assay to specifically identify patients with the LOH genetic alteration. This new diagnostic test is part of A2’s initiative to use its next-generation cell therapy TmodTM platform to revolutionize the treatment of solid tumor cancers, engineering T cells that target the loss of genetic material in tumors and enable the selective killing of tumor cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.
“We believe that our proprietary platform is ideal for companion diagnostic collaborations,” said Michael Yasiejko, Chief Commercial Officer. “We look forward to furthering A2’s efforts in identifying patients with this unique biomarker, and ultimately advance Tempus’ work with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies in therapeutic development.”
“We identified Tempus as the ideal collaborator for this CDx given its smart genomic testing platform and the scope of its dataset,” said William Go, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Head of Development at A2 Biotherapeutics. “Together, we aim to identify those patients who could potentially benefit from this investigational Tmod therapy and further our goal in making a difference in solid tumor cancers.”
Tempus’ immunotherapy platform is uniquely comprehensive and provides information including, but not limited to: immune infiltration, neoantigen prediction, tumor mutational burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), HLA typing, HLA loss of heterozygosity, TCR & BCR repertoire, and oncoviral detection.
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 clinical and molecular data, and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful, Tempus enables physicians to make 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.