Collaboration Supports Discovery of Novel Spatial Immunotherapy Biomarkers

A new collaboration will investigate spatial immunotherapy biomarkers to help advance AI-based solutions in discovering histological biomarkers and patient selection in clinical trials and clinical settings. The partnership between Nucleai and Jefferson Health cancer center will leverage Nucleai’s ATOM spatial biology platform and Jefferson’s repository of pathology and clinical data. The Israeli Innovation Authority supports the collaboration as part of the International Health-Tech Pilot Program.

Nucleai’s ATOM platform analyzes pathology images using computer vision and machine learning methods to model the tumor and the immune system’s spatial characteristics, creating unique and specific histological biomarkers that may predict patient response to therapy. These biomarkers hold the potential to provide a better understanding of cancer biology, enable further stratification of responder/non-responder patient populations, and improve the success rate of clinical trials and patient care. Nucleai leverages proprietary multimodal datasets of pathology images and clinical data from leading hospitals and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in the U.S and Israel to develop its platform.

As part of the collaboration between Nucleai and Jefferson, the two parties will test the utility of AI-based predictive biomarkers in a real-world clinical setting and assess the clinical benefit that the novel platform could provide for cancer patients treated with immunotherapy.

“It is now clear that analysis of digital pathology through computational approaches opens access to ‘hidden’ information that is beyond the resolution of a pathologist’s examination through a microscope. We look forward to working with Nucleai to ‘unlock’ such information to learn new disease mechanisms and using it to help our patients,” said Stephen Peiper, Peter A. Herbut Professor and Chair Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology at Thomas Jefferson University and Senior Vice President for the Enterprise Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Service Line of Jefferson Health System.

“Jefferson is dedicated to providing the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, preparing tomorrow’s professional leaders for 21^st century careers, and discovering new treatments to define the future of care. The collaboration with Nucleai epitomizes this vision,” said Zvi Grunwald, the Director of the Jefferson Israel Center.

“We are thrilled to launch this collaboration with Jefferson Health and are honored to be included in the Israeli Innovation Authority pilot program. Nucleai brings a unique spatial biology perspective into precision medicine, and we are eager to apply our platform to support novel biomarker discovery, diagnostics development, and clinical decision support,” Nucleai CEO Avi Veidman said in a statement.