ImpriMed, a California-based precision drugs startup, builds AI-powered canine most cancers therapy expertise that helps veterinarians establish probably the most appropriate medicine for particular person canine and feline blood cancers.
The startup, which facilities on enhancing therapy outcomes of canines and cats with most cancers first, now goals to develop its precision drugs expertise for human oncology purposes.
“The ex-vivo live-cell applied sciences we developed for canine blood cancers are well-applied to nearly all of forms of human blood most cancers in addition to feline blood cancers,” co-founder and chief government officer Sungwon Lim stated in an interview with TechCrunch. “Additionally, the confirmed know-how acquired from creating AI algorithms in veterinary oncology streamlines the constructing of latest predictive fashions in human oncology. The veterinary-to-human growth is occurring now at ImpriMed and can lead to commercialization in one-two years.”
Lim, who beforehand labored within the most cancers drug trade for greater than a decade, co-founded ImpriMed along with his previous buddy Jamin Koo in 2017. The duo had PhD levels from Stanford after receiving undergraduate levels in chemical and biomolecular engineering at KAIST in South Korea. Whereas working within the most cancers drug therapy trade, he got here up with the identical query: “Are we effectively using all of the instruments we at the moment have in our medical toolbox?”
“People who find themselves affected by most cancers and desperately want therapy proper now don’t have time to attend over 10 years for a brand new drug,” Lim stated. “After all, it’s important to proceed looking for new, higher therapeutic choices, however new drug improvement shouldn’t be the one method to enhance most cancers care.”
The co-founders need to make the most of present medicine to personalize most cancers therapy regimens for particular person sufferers. Lim says that ImpriMed’s AI-powered customized drug efficacy prediction service allows oncologists to establish efficient anticancer medicines which are extremely prone to work for a selected affected person earlier than the physician comes to a decision.
ImpriMed lately closed $23 million in its Collection A spherical, which brings its complete raised to $35 million since its inception. SoftBank Ventures Asia led the Collection A, with participation from strategic investor SK Telecom and different monetary buyers, together with HRZ Han River Companions, KDB Silicon Valley, Ignite Innovation Fund, Samyang Chemical Group and Murex Companions.
The outfit expects to companion with its strategic investor, SK Telecom, certainly one of South Korea’s greatest telco firms, which builds an AI-based veterinary X-ray image diagnosis technology called X-Caliber. Final 12 months, ImpriMed graduated from the Mayo Clinic Platform Accelerate Program to “validate its AI fashions utilizing a giant human affected person database supplied by this system,” the corporate stated.
ImpriMed’s veterinary companies are absolutely commercialized, providing 5 canine and three feline companies and producing income. The startup says greater than 350 veterinarians within the U.S. have used its service. (There are approximately 600 board-certified veterinary oncologists throughout the U.S.)
That is how its B2B service works: First, the oncologist collects reside most cancers cells and blood samples from the affected person and sends the samples to ImpriMed’s lab in California. The corporate then measures how the affected person’s reside most cancers cells reply to completely different anticancer medicine, partly by utilizing AI to mix these measurements with different organic data and predict which medicine are most probably to be efficient for the affected person’s most cancers. ImpriMed supplies the report back to the ordering veterinarian seven days after receiving the pattern on the lab, in response to the corporate.
For human precision oncology, its AI software program for multiple myeloma, a uncommon blood most cancers, is within the technique of approval, aiming to commercialize in 2025, Lim advised TechCrunch. It additionally presents a live-cell-based drug sensitivity check that lets prescribed drugs measure the efficacy of latest drug compounds on precise sufferers’ reside cells of their goal most cancers.
“We at the moment supply this contract analysis group service for canine lymphoma and purpose to commercialize the service for human acute myeloid leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma earlier than the tip of 2024,” the CEO stated.
Picture Credit: ImpriMed
Challenges ImpriMed is attempting to resolve
ImpriMed is tackling a major problem in veterinary drugs: treating lymphoma, the most common cancer diagnosed in dogs, extra successfully, Lim stated. As each canine is exclusive, typical therapy may be costly, starting from $10,000 to $25,000, and doesn’t work equally effectively for all.
“Every most cancers affected person has a distinct response to medicine, [even with standard chemotherapy protocol CHOP]; every lymphoma affected person responds in another way,” Lim continued. “As an alternative of a one-size-fits-all strategy, its [AI-powered personalized] expertise not solely will increase the possibilities of profitable therapy however can doubtlessly cut back pointless prices and unintended effects from much less efficient remedies.”
The corporate says it helped greater than 5,000 canines with lymphoma with its companies and picked up “real-world medical end result follow-up information from greater than half of these sufferers.” As well as, it ran additional validation with 2,000 people with blood cancers and Mayo Clinic Platform’s database of three million sufferers.
“Our recent study demonstrates that ImpriMed’s AI accurately identifies efficient lymphoma medicine for particular person canines with relapsed B-cell lymphoma, resulting in a 4-fold greater full response charge and a median survival time 3-fold longer than for individuals who acquired remedies that didn’t align with ImpriMed’s predictions, considerably enhancing therapy outcomes,” the corporate CEO stated.
Rivals embrace pet precision drugs firms like FidoCure and Vidium Animal Well being and corporations that use reside most cancers cells for purposeful precision drugs like Notable Labs and Xilis. ImpriMed’s distinctive energy is “the flexibility to develop and incorporate AI fashions into the customized drugs service workflow,” in response to Lim. Creating and incorporating AI fashions into the customized drugs service workflow requires a considerable amount of medical end result information that different firms battle with gathering, he added.
The corporate will use the most recent funding to develop its drug response prediction expertise past veterinary drugs into human oncology, enhance its workforce and broaden its pipelines in enterprise improvement. It has about 40 employees.