At this year’s Collision event, held in Toronto from June 18 to 20, Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner at venture capital firm FPV Ventures, shared insights on AI's role in healthcare with Fox Business correspondent Susan Li.
Chan said that while the life science market has been somewhat overlooked in the AI boom so far, his company predicts that it will benefit greatly from AI technology over the next five to 10 years.
“We’re in a lot of life science companies,” he said about FPV Ventures. “A lot of them use AI to help accelerate drug discovery, or to validate their thesis or to test out some of their assumptions without having to go in depth.”
Guardant using liquid biopsy tests to look for signs of cancer
Liquid biopsies, a non-invasive blood test, have shown strong promise in cancer detection, especially when it comes to monitoring ongoing treatment and detecting cancer recurrence.
Speaking at Collision, Dr. Craig Eagle, chief medical officer at large-cap biotechnology company Guardant Health (NASDAQ:GH), outlined SHIELD, a blood test his company has developed to screen for colorectal cancer.
“One of the things that’s challenging in oncology is that the cause of the disease is a molecular abnormality, often centered around the DNA. That abnormality can either be purely inherited or environmental, but for most people it’s in between," he explained to the audience at the conference.
Standard cancer diagnosis procedures typically involve retrieving a tissue sample, which Dr. Eagle said represents a challenge when the suspected cancer is deep within the body.
“So what we’re developing is blood-based testing. A simple tube of blood, no different to what you can do with a cholesterol or diabetes sugar test," he said on stage at the event, noting that during cell growth and turnover, some cancer cells are shed into the bloodstream. Liquid biopsy is a method of cancer detection that analyzes these shed cells to look for cancer signals in the bloodstream. Blood tests can also help physicians monitor cancer as it progresses and changes, which can help them develop the best treatment plan for each individual patient.
“You can't really treat or manage a cancer or disease unless you understand it. So by understanding the deeper molecular causes of cancer, we're actually able to get those insights even further and enable informed decision making," Dr. Eagle commented. "A simple liquid biopsy test gets the information you need at the molecular level."
How were liquid biopsy tests first developed?
One of the earliest liquid biopsy tests was the prostate-specific antigen test, which was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1986. It was initially only used to monitor cancer that had already been diagnosed, but in 1994 physicians began using it alongside digital rectal exams to screen for cancer signals in men over 50.
Later, researchers developed liquid biopsy tests that searched for two types of biomarkers in blood samples: circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which have detached from the primary tumor and entered the bloodstream, and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), smaller fragments that enter the blood when cancer cells die and break apart.
Ongoing efforts have been devoted to developing more comprehensive liquid biopsy tests. A 1999 study that detected aberrant p16 methylation in the blood of liver cancer patients provided the concept that biomarkers more specific to certain types of cancer can be detected in the blood. The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 helped further develop comprehensive cancer detection methods, including liquid biopsy tests.
The Cancer Genome Atlas was launched in 2006. It maps out the genomic changes in cancer and provides insights into its molecular basis, creating a clearer picture of cancer-specific biomarkers. Technologies like next-generation sequencing and microfluidic technologies were developed concurrently, enhancing the sensitivity of liquid biopsy tests by enabling the detection of rare cancer biomarkers. These new technologies also reduced costs and improved throughput.
Additionally, since the early 2000s the FDA has granted approval to multiple technologies specifically designed to capture and enumerate CTCs. Prior to the FDA's approval of CellSearch tumor detection technology for metastatic breast cancer in 2004, finding CTCs was challenging due to the rarity of these cells in the bloodstream. The development of the CellSearch technology revolutionized CTC detection by offering a non-invasive and highly sensitive approach.
Furthermore, the CellSearch technology helped researchers gain insights into the genomic alterations and signaling pathways that drive tumor growth, which can be used to tailor treatments to target specific molecular vulnerabilities.
Harnessing AI for better cancer detection
Guardant is one of the few companies with FDA-approved liquid biopsy companion diagnostic tests in the US market, and Dr. Eagle presented a compelling case for the widespread adoption of liquid biopsies in oncology.
He stressed that liquid biopsy tests offer a more effective and accessible way to test for cancer when compared to traditional screening methods. They are non-invasive and can easily be administered during other standard blood tests, eliminating the need for additional appointments or specialized equipment.
Dr. Eagle also noted that the convenience and simplicity of regular screenings would likely encourage more patients to participate, as they can be seamlessly integrated into their ongoing healthcare routines.
Aside from that, he pointed out that traditional cancer screenings can pose accessibility challenges for patients due to various barriers, such as geographical constraints, financial limitations or other factors. These obstacles can lead to prolonged waiting periods or limited access to procedures like colonoscopies, stool or tissue sample collection and imaging scans. Additionally, liquid biopsy tests provide results sooner than other methods. Meanwhile, the simplicity of the tests, combined with their ability to detect multiple cancer types, reduces their overall cost.
Liquid biopsies also have the potential to help researchers recognize signals of other diseases. Dr. Eagle explained that DNA damage is used as a metric to assess an individual's risk of developing a disease.
Rather than focusing only on the DNA sequence itself, epigenetics — the study of how genes are expressed and regulated — can help researchers understand the role of gene expression in cancer development and progression, as well as provide additional information about a person’s health.
“So that programming now becomes a massive database that we get to see in liquid biopsy,” said Dr. Eagle.
This is where AI becomes the most crucial. He emphasized that AI analytics will accelerate over the next five to 10 years, and that this technology will be essential for the successful analysis of enormous data sequences. He believes that there will be a rapid evolution in the field of oncology from its current state.
“We've got trials going on in smokers looking for lung cancer from a blood test, and we're seeing if we can break the back of that challenge. We're also looking at multiple cancers beyond that, whether it be lung cancer in nonsmokers, whether it be liver cancer, kidney cancer, breast cancer, etc. They're all going to be from a blood test.”
Investor takeaway
The integration of AI with innovative technologies like liquid biopsies holds immense potential to revolutionize disease detection, treatment and monitoring. These developments could pave the way for a future where personalized, preventative medicine becomes the norm.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
