InterSystems, a provider of healthcare data management systems, and Oncodesign, a biopharmaceutical company specialising in precision medicine, have announced the signing of a strategic partnership aimed at advancing research for new treatments in the field of oncology.
In a context characterised by an exponential growth of data volumes over the last 20 years, the quality and use of health and research data have become two critical issues for all healthcare stakeholders. The current health crisis has only reinforced the importance of an agile and decompartmentalised strategy for health data governance.
As part of this partnership, Oncodesign has chosen to combine its proprietary platform for the identification and validation of new therapeutic targets, called OncoSNIPER, with InterSystems’ unified health data management platform, known as InterSystems IRIS for Health. This alliance will allow both companies to develop and optimise essential synergies between the two platforms.
The InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform will be integrated into Oncodesign’s recently established Artificial Intelligence (AI) Business Unit for the storage and management of various preclinical and clinical data sources, which are highly valuable to each of the businesses involved in the drug discovery process.
By analysing and better exploiting the data consolidated through InterSystems IRIS for Health, Oncodesign’s AI BU will optimise the development of OncoSNIPER, notably through more accurate functioning of its algorithms. In addition, InterSystems will provide Oncodesign with the benefit of its international network of strategic academic partners generating health data (hospitals and universities), particularly in North America.
For InterSystems, this partnership is part of a strategic approach to healthcare players through its access to Oncodesign’s solid expertise in drug discovery and reflects its historical commitment to oncology. With a solid domestic network, InterSystems has been working for many years with major cancer centres (known as CLCC in France) through its patient administrative and clinical management solution, InterSystems TrakCare (especially in Dijon, Nice and Reims), as well as with the Toulouse University Cancer Institute Oncopole (IUCT-O) with InterSystems HealthShare, for comprehensive patient management and better coordination of the various private and public players in the region. The company has also made its expertise in health data exploitation available to innovative partners such as the start-up MyPL and the Guerbet Group.
Michel Amous, regional director EMEA at InterSystems says, “We are delighted to begin this partnership with Oncodesign, which has been a major player in the biotechnology industry for 25 years. Our goal is to provide them with our expertise in optimising data platforms to build a new intelligent architecture for oncology research.
The pooling of health data scattered, heterogeneous but so valuable is not just a simple operational consolidation. It is a project with strategic scope aimed at aggregating the various sources of data available to Oncodesign in order to improve communication between them. This dynamic governance will enable Oncodesign to remain at the forefront of biopharmaceutical innovation and ultimately to commercialise new therapeutic solutions to better serve the public interest.”
For Oncodesign, this partnership is the second step in its strategic development based around AI after the launch in 2017 of the OncoSNIPER project (clinical trial of 600 patients with 3 oncology indications and 16 partners). After generating large amounts of heterogeneous clinical data, the company needs to structure the available data using the InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform, before implementing the algorithms needed to select sub-populations of patients with treatment-resistant cancers.
Philippe Genne, Chairman and CEO of Oncodesign, stated, “We have known the InterSystems teams well for several years, and we are therefore very pleased to formalise our collaboration through this ambitious partnership. Our expertise at Oncodesign is in developing new treatments and InterSystems’ is in leveraging data to accelerate the digital transformation of companies.
Together, we will be able to pool our respective fields of expertise in order to make our drug discovery process in precision medicine more reliable and even faster. Traditionally, the lead optimisation phase alone can last up to 3 years and cost between 10 and 12 million euros with random results in the medium term (1/10 success rate). Today, artificial intelligence is changing the game the exploitation of data gives us the possibility to make more informed choices in increasingly rapid timeframes.”
This collaboration will bring together several distinct and complementary fields of expertise, including data science, artificial intelligence, pharmacology, chemistry, biology and clinical research. The two companies share a common goal, to harness the power of data to develop and industrialise new therapeutic solutions in the field of oncology.
On May 21st, Oncodesign inaugurated its new headquarters in Dijon (Batiment Jean Mermoz – 18 rue Jean Mazen), which will house its AI teams. On the same day, the company will launched its new development strategy based on AI approaches.
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