On September 25, 2018 Protagen AG, the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) and NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH have reported a collaboration to improve the in silico prediction of immunotherapy response in malignant melanoma (Press release, Protagen, SEP 25, 2018, View Source [SID1234529620]).
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Cancer immunotherapy, e.g. by Checkpoint inhibitors, offers enormous potential for the treatment of many cancer indications, including melanoma. Although stimulation of the immune system holds great promise for cancer treatment, many challenges remain, including a limited response rate and even resistance in some patients. Also, patients may suffer from severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs), resulting from an overactivated immune response. Both the variable clinical response and irAEs demand predictive models to support patient management.
Through this collaboration, Protagen, NCT and NEC will develop and apply deep machine-learning to explore and establish biomarker models for relevant treatment-associated endpoints such as irAEs, clinical response, and/or survival.
Dr. Saverio Niccolini, General Manager, NEC Laboratories Europe commented: "The field of machine learning and AI has witnessed dramatic progress over the last decade and will soon be a critical component for the analysis of patient data. Extensive biomarker guidance will be required to allocate patients to the most appropriate clinical trial and – after approval of novel treatments – deliver the best therapy to each patient. We would like to be involved in this process and look forward to the collaboration with the NCT and Protagen."
PD Dr. Jessica Hassel from the NCT, stated: "Checkpoint inhibitors offer an enormous potential but also provide some challenges. Building on our initial collaboration with Protagen, we see this project as an opportunity to address the challenges posed by limited response rates and irAEs utilizing machine learning and AI. Although to date its impact remains low, we are convinced that from the molecular characterization of tumors to personalized treatment, machine learning will be increasingly important, hence we look forward to this collaboration."
Dr. Georg Lautscham, Protagen’s CEO, added: "Immunotherapies are a new cornerstone in treating cancer patients. An important challenge is to understand which patients are most likely to respond or suffer from irAEs. Protagen has developed an immuno-profiling approach and machine learning strategies to deal with highly dimensional patient data to address this. We are convinced machine learning efforts will increasingly influence the field, and are excited that NEC and NCT share this view and look forward to advancing this approach together."