Hi, I'm Cliff Reid, CEO of Travera, and I am here today with Marty Tenenbaum, a long-time friend and a fellow MIT alumnus. Marty is a cancer survivor and the founder of Cancer Commons, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping late-stage cancer patients find effective treatments. Cancer Commons and Travera recently launched a partnership to provide Travera's Rapid Therapy Guidance tests to Cancer Common's patients.
I will ask Marty for his perspective on what the two organizations can do together to advance personalized oncology for late-stage cancer patients.
Marty, I'd like to start with your description of how Cancer Commons uses patient data to improve cancer treatments.
The DNA sequencing revolution has unveiled that there are not a few tens of different types of cancers like we used to believe, but instead, there are thousands of different subtypes of cancer. For example, in my cancer, melanoma, a few years ago, we thought there were four subtypes, and now we realize there are over 30 subtypes. The problem is that patients with different cancer subtypes respond differently to the same drugs. There are now so many known subtypes that the current clinical trials system is completely overwhelmed. It was designed to test drugs and drug combinations against homogeneous patient populations, not against patients with thousands of different subtypes. There aren't enough patients to populate a clinical trial for every subtype and every promising drug or drug combination.
What is Cancer Commons doing to address this problem?
Instead of trying to run thousands of new clinical trials, Cancer Commons is using the actual outcomes from treatments of cancer patients to generate the same kind of data generated by a clinical trial. Our approach is to have our patients share their data (anonymously). That data includes their cancer type and subtype, based on DNA sequencing, along with their history of treatments and outcomes. Cancer Commons organizes this data to provide each patient with the latest information from the global cancer research community relevant to their situation and their particular cancer subtype. As this database grows, it will have treatments and outcomes for more and more patients with similar cancer subtypes, providing them and their oncologists with guidance about which treatments are most likely to be effective for them. This kind of data-driven therapy guidance doesn't exist today for most cancer subtypes; practically speaking, it cannot be created using the current clinical trial system.
Which cancers are you focusing on?
Our initial focus is on brain, pancreatic, and prostate cancer, but our approach is completely general and will eventually span all cancers.
How do you see Travera helping you accomplish this mission of improving treatments for late-stage cancer patients?
We have been waiting for years, actually decades, for a fast and effective laboratory test that can test different cancer drugs and drug combinations against each patient's live cancer cells in the laboratory to determine if the drug is going to be effective for that patient's unique cancer, instead of just giving the drug to the patient and hoping it will work. Travera has finally delivered such a test.
How might such a test fit into the services that Cancer Commons currently offers its patients?
For the cancers for which we do not yet have a critical mass of patients with each different subtype of that cancer, we can immediately offer them guidance to therapies that are likely to be effective for them. As our patients use the Travera test, the Cancer Commons database will show which drugs and cancer subtypes get the most accurate therapy guidance from the Travera test and also show where the Travera test is less effective at predicting the response of patients to drugs.
You mentioned drug combinations. What are your views on identifying the best drug combinations for late-stage cancer patients?
Again, the current clinical trials system is completely unequipped to test the millions of potential combinations of the 300+ FDA-approved cancer drugs. To address this problem, Cancer Commons connects patients to researchers interested in their cancer subtype and gets treatment and outcomes data back from patients who undergo novel therapy combinations. Over time, we will build a database of which drug combinations work best against which cancer subtypes. But in the meantime, we can use Travera to test different drug combinations against each patient’s live cancer cells and provide personalized therapy guidance to patients and oncologists considering novel drug combinations.
What are your key challenges in offering the Travera test to your patients?
I think there are two key challenges. The first challenge is that Travera is a young company with fancy new technology invented at MIT, different than anything that has come before it. A significant portion of the oncology community is skeptical about this kind of drug testing due to previous failed attempts using old technologies. They will require a large amount of clinical validation data before embracing such a new and revolutionary approach to cancer therapy guidance. Fortunately, Cancer Commons patients tend to be innovative and forward-looking, and they are often early adopters of promising new technologies. The second challenge is getting live cancer cells from patients. Cancer Commons has worked extensively with circulating tumor cells from liquid biopsies (blood draws), and there are not enough cancer cells in the blood to test. Travera will have to continue using tissue and malignant fluid biopsies to obtain live cancer cells from each patient, which places a significant burden on the patient. Cancer Commons patients tend to be aggressive in seeking new approaches to treating their cancers and will generally be more willing than the general population to undergo a biopsy to test a large panel of cancer drugs against their live cancer cells. Cancer Commons’ nurse navigators can assist patients with logistic challenges in getting their biopsy tissue shipped to Taverna while it is still fresh.
Marty, is there anything else you would like to say?
Our patients, and all late-stage cancer patients, need better therapy guidance to select better treatments, and they need it now. Cancer Commons' data-sharing approach is part of the solution, and the Travera test is another part of the solution.
Marty, thank you very much for your perspective on our partnership. All of us at Travera look forward to working with you and your Cancer Commons team to help late-stage cancer patients find effective treatments.
If you’d like to learn more about Travera’s testing in the recent educational webinar with Cancer Commons, you find it below.