빅데이터로 환자 맞춤형 항암제 개발을 앞당긴다

Guardant Health 와 Flatiron Health 은 개별 암세포의 유전 정보 및 항암제 임상시험 결과를 아우르는 데이터 베이스를 구축하여 새로운 항암제 개발에 걸리는 시간을 절반 이하로 단축하는 프로젝트를 공동 진행하기로 했다고 발표했다. Guardant는 이미 상용화된 Guadant360 이라는 혈액 기반 암세포 유전자 분석기를 통해 항암제 투여 이후 암이 진행되는 과정을 지속적으로 모니터링 하고 그 결과를 Flatiron의 클라우드 플랫폼에 업로드하여 전세계 항암제 임상시험 결과를 종합한 데이터 베이스를 구축할 계획이다. 기존의 암세포 조직을 떼어내어 분석하는 방법은 비용이 비싸고 환자에게 무리를 주어 자주 시행할 수 없다는 단점이 있는데,  Guardant의 방법은 암환자의 혈액 검사로 암세포의 유전변이 정보를 손쉽게 알아낼 수 있다는 장점이 있다. 두 회사는 전세계 암연구 및 치료기관의 임상시험 결과를 종합하여,  개별 암 환자들에게 가장 잘 듣는 항암제를 찾는 것에 우선 주력할 것이라고 발표했다. 2015년 말까지 데이트 베이스를 구축하고 2016년 상반기에 제약회사들과의 파트너쉽을 진행할 계획이라고 한다.

tN 인사이트:세계적으로 매년 8백만명이 암으로 사망하고, 천4백만명이 새로 암에 걸리는 것으로 알려져있다. 암은 유전자가 변이를 일으켜 생기는 질병이며, 진행 과정에서도 지속적으로 변화하기 때문에 암환자마다 치료효과가 천차만별이었다.  같은 폐암환자라도 환자 A는 항암제 1로 치료가 되는 반면, 환자 B는 아무런 진전을 보지 못하는 경우가 있기 때문이다.  두 스타트업의 협력을 통해 전세계 개별 암세포의 유전 정보 및 진행 과정을 모니터링 하여  축적한 방대한 임상시험 결과를 데이터베이스화하고 분석함으로써, 임상시험 기간을 줄이고 궁극적으로는 개별 암 환자에게 적합한 항암제 개발에 한 발 더 다가갈 수 있을 것으로 보인다.

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Every year, 8 million people around the world die from cancer, and 14 million people find out they have the disease. Guardant Health and Flatiron Health are joining forces in an aim to cut those numbers down using big data and analytics.

The two highly venture-backed oncology startups are creating a database of genomic information, clinical trials, and drug treatment results that will vastly accelerate the development of new cancer drugs.

Flatiron, a cloud-based platform that aggregates data from cancer treatment centers around the world, will provide the structure and all of the clinical trial information for the database.

Guardant’s commercially available blood cancer screening product, Guardant360, will be used to collect data from patients in a much more efficient way than previously possible.

“The whole challenge in cancer is that people respond to therapies initially, and then the cancer evolves and mutates and these drugs stop working,” says Guardant founder Helmy Eltoukhy.

Prior to Guardant360, the only way to access the genomic information about the tumor as it evolves is through repeated biopsies, which are expensive and painful. Eltoukhy says the median cost of a biopsy is $3,700, but the average is $14,000 when you take into account a 20 percent complication rate that generally leads to hospitalization.

As an alternative, Guardant has developed technology to access this information through a blood test. Essentially, as a tumor grows, it’s also shedding dead cells, composed of unique genetic tissue, into the blood stream. With a tube of blood, Guardant can draw a complete genomic picture of an individual’s cancer and how it’s progressing, which makes it easier to target the disease.

What this means for the partnership is that Guardant can determine the results of cancer drug therapy trials in a much more time- and cost-effective manner than was ever possible before.

“It takes about 8.8 years on average for a drug to make its way to the clinic, and 39 percent of clinical trials fail because they can’t find enough patients to enroll in the study,” Eltoukhy says. “Now we can do 100 blood tests, send the kits anywhere in the country, and get the molecular information to match these patients with clinical trials.”

Guardant and Flatiron will be aggregating the results from all of these clinical trials to gain insights around which drugs work best for which patients.

Currently, many patients will use FDA-approved drugs that have not yet been approved for their specific cancer type, Eltoukhy says. Sometimes these therapies are successful, but the lack of clinical trial data means that patients are blindly experimenting with very expensive drugs that may have no effect.

“We’re on the cusp of really amazing things,” Eltoukhy says. “We’ve never generated this much data on cancer patients, and now we have a flashlight into the heart of the disease and we can watch it in real-time.”

Flatiron and Guardant will be working on combining datasets and building out the platform for the remainder of the year, and plan to start discussions with pharmaceutical partners in the first half of 2016.

출처:

1) http://techneedle.com/archives/21932?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

2) http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/19/guardant-health-and-flatiron-health-team-up-to-cure-cancer-with-big-data/