Donald Kennedy Ph.D.
Former Commissioner of the FDA and Editor of Science

"CollabRx puts the patient at the front end of a remarkable experiment in "translational medicine" - one in which basic molecular biology, computational methods and a network of experts and institutions collaborate to work out personalized medical solutions."

Our vision is to revolutionize cancer care by treating each patient using the best available science, while at the same time driving that science forward. There is widespread belief that within ten years personalized molecular oncology will be the standard of care. Common wisdom also holds that it’s not yet ready for prime time. We feel otherwise. It is now feasible to perform a de novo (unbiased) whole genome analysis of an individual patient’s tumor and identify the most effective therapies for that patient, even in the absence of validated biomarkers. Although technical challenges remain, the best way to surmount them is through a continuous learning process, solving problems and improving outcomes one patient at a time. With nearly 600,000 Americans dying of cancer every year, most after failing standard of care, we are compelled to put these ideas to the test.

Our vision is that all cancer patients not just CollabRx clients will eventually benefit from our work. We envision a new patient-centric paradigm where standard of care is driven by translational medicine, where researchers continuously test and refine their models of cancer biology based on real time clinical responses to therapies. A therapy that proves effective in a patient can efficiently drive the discovery of new molecular subtypes, diagnostics and therapeutics, by validating the prediction in a small, highly targeted trial of other patients with similar molecular phenotypes. Unsuccessful therapies can be analyzed to refine understanding of the tumor’s biology and the drugs’ mechanisms of action.

This paradigm arrives in the nick of time, amid growing concerns that the current paradigm, rooted in randomized clinical trials, is about to hit a wall. Cancer is hundreds if not thousands of unique molecular diseases. With hundreds of new targeted therapies and diagnostics in development, there simply isn’t enough time, money, patients or specimens to test all relevant therapy combinations on large groups of patients. We need a smarter approach, one that exploits genomics to generate much more information from every patient, particularly information about which drugs are likely to work best in specific patients. Such an approach, exemplified by CollabRx ONE, enables drugs to be tested with far fewer patients. It lets us leverage what we learn at the molecular level across many cancers, and rapidly develop new off label uses for targeted therapies that are approved. Most importantly, it provides each patient with the optimal treatment for them.

Please contact us to learn more about CollabRx ONE personalized research services.