Caris Life Sciences Selects IBM to Accelerate Use of Molecular Profiling in Cancer Treatment Selection

SOURCE: IBM

Armonk, NY – 17 Sept, 2014 — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Caris Life Sciences is using IBM technical computing and storage technology to accelerate the company’s molecular profiling services for cancer patients. These services deliver critically important information to help oncologists develop tailored therapeutic plans for each patient’s unique cancer, which could lead to better health outcomes and reduced costs to the healthcare system in general.

Today, optimal cancer care requires sophisticated integration of diverse molecular profiling technologies, which  analyze the alterations in molecular signaling pathways in a patient’s tumor to best match them to potential treatment options  or clinical trials by sifting through patient case history treatments, clinical trial data, medical literature, and other emerging evidence.  This poses information overload challenges for oncologists who need to make treatment decisions in real time. Today’s clinicians need access to sophisticated big data infrastructure and analytical algorithms to optimize clinical decisions.

To help meet this need, Caris is using multiple technologies to develop world-class  molecular profiling services that help doctors advance evidence-based, personalized treatment options for cancer patients. It has tested more than 65,000 cancer patients for 70 different molecular markers using multiple technology platforms.  These markers are then correlated with 55 FDA-approved cancer therapies and hundreds of clinical trials agents.

The Caris tumor profiling database is one of the largest datasets in the application of advanced molecular profiling technologies to support clinicians in delivering personalized treatment recommendations – or precision oncology.

“Widespread access to “Big Data” resources is revolutionizing how cancer is diagnosed and treated and requires sophisticated data management and computational capabilities for annotation and analysis,” said George Poste, DVM, Ph.D., Vice Chairman, Caris Life Sciences. “ Molecular profiling data will soon be measured in the terabyte per patient level. It also has to be stored for years and be organized in a manner that facilitates deep analytic evaluation and ensures data security.”

Working with IBM and premier IBM Business Partner Re-Store, Caris has developed a scalable, data-aware and secure infrastructure with IBM systems and servers for complex molecular  profiling analysis. This enhanced infrastructure leverages the broadest range of IBM technologies in the life sciences industry. With the support of IBM technical computing and software defined storage technology, Caris can now make recommendations on 55 potentially actionable drug to molecular target associations as a result of being able to  profile both genomic and proteomic data– a significant increase over the current 19 therapeutic recommendations using genomic information alone.

By adding IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and code name Elastic Storage to its HPC environment, Caris is able to access and process massive amounts of data at a significantly faster pace.

“Precision cancer diagnosis and treatment requires the ability to process and analyze staggering amounts of genomic and clinical data with scale and speed, and to accelerate this work, we need to provide clinicians and analysts with technical computing platforms,” said Frank N. Lee, Ph.D., Lead Architect, Genomic Medicine, IBM. “IBM technology has helped Caris handle this data volume with greater speed, efficiency and scalability, and at the same time maintain the required security and reliability essential for handling medical and health data.”

About IBM
Learn more about IBM life sciences at: ibm.com/lifesciences
Learn more about IBM technical computing systems at: ibm.com/technicalcomputing

About Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences is a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine through quality and innovation.  As the first commercial mover in comprehensive molecular profiling in oncology, Caris Molecular Intelligence™ is an industry vanguard, with 65,000-plus patients profiled and counting. Ordered by nearly 7,000 oncologists in 63 countries, Molecular Intelligence correlates molecular data generated from a patient’s tumor with biomarker/drug associations derived from clinical cancer literature. Using a variety of advanced and clinically-relevant technologies, Caris provides oncologists with the most clinically actionable information to help them personalize treatment for cancer patients. This multi-technology approach enables Caris to provide therapeutic guidance for 55 drug associations, compared to the 19 that can be found through use of next-generation sequencing alone. The company is also developing a series of blood tests based on its proprietary Carisome® TOP platform — a revolutionary blood-based testing technology for diagnosis, prognosis, and theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and other international markets. To learn more, please visit www.carislifesciences.com