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Although definitions of personalized medicine vary greatly from one person and organization to the next, the term gets thrown around a lot in the context of oncology — for good reason. There simply is no one-size-fits-all approach to fighting cancer.

“In terms of cancer care, all the drugs have some degree, if not a large degree, of toxicity, so why treat somebody and make them sicker or potentially allow their cancer to spread if the drug is not going to work? Proper drug selection is more important,“ Neil Campbell, CEO of Helomics Corp. (Pittsburgh), formerly known as Precision Therapeutics Inc., told Medical Device Daily.

Helomics has dubbed itself a personalized health care company because of its tumor profiling platform designed to analyze individual tumors and treat those tumors in a virtual manner (in the lab after it has been surgically removed from the patient) to improve drug selection.

“We want to make sure we understand what the patient's tumors are doing, why they behave and act the way they do, while the patient is still alive and their cells are alive,“ Campbell said.

To do this, the company uses its precision cellular analytical platform (PCAP) to collect and analyze cell cycle data over a 25-day to 35-day time frame. “We literally grow the patient's tumors for another three and a half weeks as if it's still in their body,“ he said.

After the tumor has been analyzed for various genomic and proteomic information, the PCAP's live-cell Chemofix assay is used to determine cellular response to a variety of chemotherapeutic agents to help inform treatment decisions. “We treat the patients virtually with drugs that they would normally be treated with and we tell the physicians how best to treat the patient,“ Campbell said.

Virtual study determines most efficacious drug

If the selected drugs are experimental, the company works with an institution and pharmaceutical company to run a virtual study using that particular sample. If the drug of choice is already on the market, Helomics works directly with the physician to tell them which commercial drug has a better chance of working on that particular tumor.

The benefit is two-fold. The health care system saves money by not prescribing the wrong drug and the patient is less likely to be subjected to unnecessary harmful side effects. Campbell said the platform has attracted interest from biotech and pharmaceutical companies that can use the knowledge gained from these virtual treatments to develop new drugs.

If the company discovers through a virtual study that the tumor responds to a particular experimental drug, that information could be used to help select the patient for an actual clinical trial, Campbell said. “So the pharma/biotech industry is very interested in this virtual clinical study, virtual patient element,“ he said.

The company does get reimbursed for running these tests, Campbell said.

Helomics launched the fourth generation of its PCAP platform last April. The latest iteration of the technology has enabled the company to better collaborate with partners in pharmaceutical, diagnostics, biotech, academia and government to develop new treatment markers and companion diagnostics as well as new anti-cancer therapies. It also expanded the company's reach into nutrigenomics and proteomics in the wellness and prevention markets.

Helomics is owned by a private equity firm, Healthcare Royalty Partners, which provided $60 million of financing in November 2014 to support the company's new strategic vision after acquiring Precision Therapeutics in September 2014 and changing its name to Helomics. The company also appointed a new management team at that time, which included Campbell. Under his leadership the company has reoriented itself toward comprehensive tumor profiling. Since then the company has licensed and acquired other pieces of technology as well as developed new technology internally to build the platform. //