Volastra Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company at the forefront of developing cancer treatments targeting chromosomal instability (CIN), has announced strategic collaborations with Microsoft, Function Oncology, and Tailor Bio. These partnerships aim to enhance the potential of Volastra’s therapeutic pipeline by identifying predictive biomarkers across various tumor types. This initiative can potentially extend the application of Volastra’s KIF18A inhibitors well beyond cancers characterized by universally high levels of CIN.
The initiative capitalizes on Volastra’s expertise in CIN, a fundamental cancer hallmark linked to faster disease progression, increased therapy resistance, and reduced patient survival. Despite CIN’s prevalence in cancer, its levels greatly vary across different tumor types, necessitating a biomarker-defined approach to identify patients who would most benefit from Volastra’s treatments.
Charles Hugh-Jones, M.D., FRCP, CEO of Volastra, emphasized the importance of predictive biomarkers in extending their therapies’ reach. By collaborating with distinguished partners, Volastra aims to address even those cancers with heterogeneous CIN levels.
Since 2020, Volastra has worked with Microsoft Research to develop AI-based models that accurately quantify CIN in patient samples, a challenging and costly task for manual processes. Jonathan Carlson, Ph.D., from Microsoft Research Health Futures, expressed excitement about their joint progress in creating AI techniques for identifying CIN’s visual hallmarks and looks forward to further supporting Volastra’s mission.
Complementing this visual approach, Function Oncology and Tailor Bio engagements bring unique precision medicine expertise. Function Oncology’s CRISPR platform is set to uncover patient-specific drug target vulnerabilities, with co-founder Srinath Sampath, M.D., Ph.D., highlighting their capability to reveal genetic truths about cancer target dependence. Concurrently, Tailor Bio’s co-founder Jason Yip, MBA, spoke about the potential of genomic CIN signatures, as presented in a recent Nature publication, to quantify aspects of chromosomal instability. Tailor Bio’s precision medicine platform is expected to contribute significantly to clinical trials exploring KIF18A inhibition.
Through these partnerships, Volastra endeavors to accelerate the development and broad application of its innovative therapeutics, ultimately aiming to benefit a wider spectrum of cancer patients.
Jon Napitupulu is Director of Media Relations at The Clinical Trial Vanguard. Jon, a computer data scientist, focuses on the latest clinical trial industry news and trends.
