Caris Life Sciences (Armonk, New York) said it is using IBM (Rochester, Minnesota) 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. 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 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.