imprimedis a California-based precision medicine startup building an AI-powered canine cancer treatment technology that helps veterinarians identify the best drug for an individual dog or cat's blood cancer. Masu.
The startup initially focused on improving outcomes for dogs and cats with cancer, and now aims to expand its precision medicine technology for human oncology applications.
“The in vitro live cell technology we developed for canine blood cancers has been successfully applied to most types of human blood cancers, as well as feline blood cancers,” said Co-Founder and CEO CEO Sungwon Lim said in an interview. Tech Crunch. “Also, the proven know-how gained from developing AI algorithms in veterinary oncology will streamline the construction of new predictive models in human oncology. It is expected to be commercialized within one to two years.”
Lim co-founded Imprimed with his old friend Jamin Khoo in 2017, after working in the cancer drug industry for more than a decade. The two received bachelor's degrees in chemical and biomolecular engineering from KAIST in South Korea, and then Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. . The same question occurred to him when he was working in the cancer drug treatment industry. “Are we effectively utilizing all the tools in our medical toolbox today?”
“People suffering from cancer who need immediate treatment do not have time to wait more than 10 years for a new drug,” Lim said. “Of course, it is essential to continue to search for new and better treatment options, but developing new drugs should not be the only way to improve cancer treatment.”
The co-founders hope to use existing drugs to customize cancer treatment plans for individual patients. Lim said that ImpriMed's AI-powered personalized drug prediction service allows oncologists to identify effective cancer drugs that are likely to work for a given patient before doctors make decisions. He says it can be identified.
ImpriMed recently closed a $23 million Series A round, bringing its total funding since inception to $35 million. SoftBank Ventures Asia led the Series A, with participation from strategic investor SK Telecom and financial investors including HRZ Han River Partners, KDB Silicon Valley, Ignite Innovation Fund, Samyang Chemical Group, and Murex Partners.
The organization will partner with strategic investor SK Telecom, one of South Korea's largest telecommunications companies, which has developed an AI-based veterinary X-ray imaging technology called X-Caliber. There is. Last year, I graduated from Implemented. Mayo Clinic Platform Acceleration Program The company said it will “validate the AI model using the program's extensive human patient database.”
Implemented's veterinary services are fully commercialized and generate revenue with five dog and three cat services. The startup says more than 350 of his veterinarians in the U.S. are using its services. (There is Approximately 600 certified veterinary oncologists across the United States)
This is how their B2B services work. First, an oncologist collects live cancer cells and a blood sample from the patient and sends the samples to her ImpriMed lab in California. The company then measures how the patient's living cancer cells respond to various cancer drugs. Part of this involves using AI to combine these measurements with other biological information to predict which drugs will be most effective against a patient's cancer. The company says Implemented will provide a report to the ordering veterinarian seven days after the laboratory receives the sample.
AI software for human precision oncology multiple myelomaThe treatment for the rare blood cancer is currently in the approval process, with a goal of commercialization in 2025, Lim told TechCrunch. We also offer live cell-based drug susceptibility testing, which allows pharmaceutical companies to measure the effectiveness of new drug compounds against live cells of target cancers in real patients.
“We currently offer this contract research organization service for canine lymphoma and aim to commercialize the service for human acute myeloid leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma by the end of 2024. ” said the CEO.
Image credits: imprimed
The challenges ImpriMed is trying to solve
Imprimed treats lymphoma, The most common cancers diagnosed in dogs, more effectively, said Lim. Because every dog is unique, traditional treatments can be expensive, ranging from $10,000 to $25,000, and are not equally effective for all dogs.
“Each cancer patient responds differently to drugs. [even with standard chemotherapy protocol CHOP]“Each lymphoma patient responds differently,” Lim continued. “Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, [AI-powered personalized] Technology not only increases the likelihood of treatment success but also has the potential to reduce unnecessary costs and side effects of less effective treatments. ”
The company says its services have helped more than 5,000 dogs with lymphoma and collected “actual clinical outcome tracking data from more than half of those patients.” Additionally, he performed further validation using 2,000 blood cancer patients and his 3 million patient database on the Mayo Clinic platform.
“Our recent study showed that ImpriMed’s AI pinpointed effective lymphoma treatments in individual dogs with relapsed B-cell lymphoma, resulting in four times the complete response rate compared to dogs that received no treatment. “We demonstrated a three-fold increase in median survival,” said the company's CEO.
Competitors include pet precision medicine companies such as FidoCure and Vidium Animal Health, as well as companies that use live cancer cells for functional precision medicine, such as Notable Labs and Xilis. ImpriMed's unique strength, according to Lim, is its “ability to develop and incorporate AI models into the workflow of personalized health services.” Developing and incorporating AI models into personalized medicine service workflows will require large amounts of clinical outcomes data that other companies struggle to collect, he added.
The company plans to use the funding to expand its drug response prediction technology beyond veterinary medicine into human oncology, add employees, and expand its business development pipeline. The number of staff is approximately 40.
