John Cole, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Research Park startup SimBioSys, joins the podcast! He discusses the breakthroughs his team has created for "transforming decision making and patient experience in cancer care” through a powerful software...
TumorScope™ Breast
SimBioSys TumorScope™ currently aids the identification of the safest and most efficacious drug regimens for breast cancer patients.
It provides quantitative and qualitative analysis of a patient’s potential response to therapy, generated with a 3D computational model incorporating previously acquired diagnostic data.
The results from TumorScope™ are intended to be used in conjunction with the oncologist’s professional judgment, patient’s clinical history, symptoms, and other diagnostic tests.
With hundreds of retrospective patients validated, our results speak for themselves – a 95% correlation between simulated final volume and actual clinical volume post-therapy.
The Future
TumorScope™ Brain
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The Future
TumorScope™ Mouth/Throat
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TumorScope™ Lung
SimBioSys is developing TumorScope™ Lung, with the goal of having a positive impact on quality of life, clinical decision-making, and healthcare costs associated with lung cancer.
Though lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, it is amongst the few solid tumors for which immunotherapeutics have shown great promise.
The structure of lung tissue is dissimilar to that of other tissues we have studied, as the lungs are highly vascularized, oxygenated, and composed of numerous branching sets of airways.
These factors facilitate the need for accurate 3D models of the lung tumor microenvironment, and require nuanced optimization of our image analysis and segmentation methods.
The Future
TumorScope™ Bladder
Accounting for approximately 81,000 new cases in the US each year, bladder cancer is the sixth most-frequently diagnosed solid tumor.
The primary goal of neoadjuvant chemo for advanced bladder cancer is not to enable bladder-conserving treatment, but to downstage the tumor before radical cystectomy.
Bladder cancer staging is strongly dependent on the cancer’s invasion into the bladder wall and surrounding perivesical tissue.
Because of this, the SimBioSys TumorScope™ is poised to offer healthcare providers new methods to predict the degree of downstaging under different treatment regimens, and thereby optimize therapy for patients.
The Future
TumorScope™ Prostate
Affecting approximately 165,000 men in the United States each year, prostate cancers tend to occur in older men, and are often slow to progress.
As a result, management of the disease frequently includes watchful waiting and active surveillance.
SimBioSys TumorScope™ is capable of predicting tumor growth and progression, both with and without intervention.
There exists an obvious application in weighing the risks and benefits of less aggressive approaches to prostate cancer management.
The Future
TumorScope™ Ovary
The “silent killer”, early stage ovarian cancer often presents with symptoms similar to those of other common gynecological or gastroenterological issues.
Approximately 70% of epithelial ovarian cancers are not diagnosed until stage III or IV.
Ovarian cancer represents a natural next step for SimBioSys, allowing us to leverage the knowledge and modeling expertise we’ve accumulated.
This will allow us to target a cancer with high morbidity and mortality, for which neoadjuvant therapy is becoming an increasingly important option.
The Future
TumorScope™ Colon
Please Stay Tuned
The Future
TumorScope™ Skin
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The Future
TumorScope™ Kidney
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The Future
TumorScope™ Liver
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The Future
TumorScope™ Uterus
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The Future
TumorScope™ Thyroid
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The Future
TumorScope™ Pancreas
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The Future
TumorScope™ Esophagus
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Tumor Microenvironment
Modeling
The tumor microenvironment is understood as a complex space where cancer cells adapt their metabolic behavior, competing and cooperating with nearby healthy cells in order to grow.
Understanding the complex ways in which cancer cells interact with other nearby cell types—competing for some resources, sharing others, and eliciting molecular signals that reshape their surroundings—is critical for understanding tumor progression and response to therapy.
SimBioSys TumorScope™ offers a computational window to these interactions, enabling patients and healthcare providers to explore how different treatment regimens can influence tumor response, and ultimately, patient survival.
Virtual Trials
The logistical and financial requirements of clinical drug trials are burdensome in the context of developing novel cancer therapeutics.
Additionally, there is inherent risk for the participants of these trials, both human and animal.
Building on the aforementioned technology, SimBioSys plans to create software to virtually test the efficacy of a drug on our library of patients.
The goal is to use this technology for planning and selecting the most appropriate cohorts, using computational methods, before a trial begins.
Additionally, this technology will be used for testing the effects of various forms of a drug on virtual patients, as opposed to humans or animals.
This technology will provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying treatment non-response, and will aid in drug development efforts.
Drug Delivery Modeling
After the SimBioSys platform has been extended to nearly the full range of solid mass tumors, pharmaceutical companies will be able to test their numerous therapies against a range of simulated tumors to discover new uses and delivery methods for drugs.
Studies show a salient relationship between sub-optimal drug delivery and acquired drug-resistance, leading to increased risk of mortality.
TumorScope™ provides an opportunity to reduce the likelihood of this occurrence.
SimBioSys is providing solutions for clinicians, patients, researchers and pharmaceutical companies. If you are interested in our product & services, or would like to collaborate, please contact us using the form below or email us at contact@simbiosys.com.
180 N LaSalle Street,
Suite 3250,
Chicago IL 60601
60 Hazelwood Drive,
Suite 230D,
Champaign IL 68120
