USA – Freenome has collaborated with Siemens Healthineers to identify appropriate biomarkers to improve breast cancer detection.
Both parties will be looking for blood test markers that complement those already identified by mammograms, breast MRIs, and other commonly used imaging techniques, with the ultimate goal of developing a liquid biopsy test that augments, rather than completely replaces, current breast cancer detection methods.
Freenome will use artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to model its multi-omics data in order to assist researchers in identifying effective biomarkers.
Freenome CEO Mike Nolan said: “Siemens Healthineers is an established leader in the development of imaging and diagnostic technologies, especially in breast cancer screening with more recent improvements leveraging 3D mammograms or digital breast tomosynthesis.
“This collaboration will give us even more insights on how we can incorporate unique data types to address the unmet medical needs for one of the most common cancers.”
Freenome is a biotechnology firm that offers the most comprehensive multi-omics platform for early cancer detection via a routine blood draw.
The company has expertise in molecular biology, computational biology, and machine learning to detect disease-related patterns among cell-free biomarkers.
Siemens Healthineers is a medical technology company headquartered in Erlangen, Germany, that specializes in AI-enabled applications and digital offerings.
The new applications will improve its in-vitro diagnostics, image-guided therapy, in-vivo diagnostics, and advanced cancer care capabilities.
The collaboration will make use of Freenome’s machine learning and multi-omics capabilities to detect early breast cancer.
It will augment existing imaging technologies with epigenetic, proteomic, genomic, immunologic, and other data types to improve the accuracy of screening tests.
In addition to Siemens’ expertise in breast cancer diagnostics, the research collaboration will heavily rely on Freenome’s molecular data collection and analysis expertise—as well as the artificial intelligence technology that the company employs to perform those analyses.
The researchers will search for the most telling biomarkers or molecular signatures linked to breast cancer using Freenome’s machine learning and other AI software on its epigenetic, proteomic, genomic, and immunologic data.
Siemens Healthineers centre for innovation in diagnostics (CID) head Rangarajan Sampath said: “With their multi-omics approach in molecular diagnostics, Freenome is our partner of choice for this study.
“Our collaboration in the identification and development of new biomarkers will allow us to work together toward a new patient-centric pathway to diagnose early-stage breast cancer.”
Siemens and Freenome have both spent the last year increasing their cancer diagnostic efforts. For example, in April, Siemens completed its massive US$16.4 billion acquisition of Varian Medical Systems.
This acquisition expanded both the diagnostic and treatment segments of its existing cancer portfolio by adding Varian’s radiosurgery hardware, care management software, and other oncology offerings.
Meanwhile, Freenome has released data showing that its multiomics-based liquid biopsy techniques are effective at detecting not only early-stage colon cancer but also, pancreatic cancer, according to a September presentation after raising US$270 million just over a year ago to continue developing its colorectal cancer-spotting blood test.
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