The evolving strategic relationship will drive the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered pathology in translational research and clinical trials.
The initial work within this extended agreement will focus on key translational research in oncology, fibrosis, and immunology, with an overall goal to continue transitioning this work into clinical trials.
“We look forward to collaborating with PathAI to expand the potential application of AI in the drug development process to include translational research, clinical trials and diagnostic advancements,” said Robert Plenge, MD, PhD, Bristol Myers Squibb Senior Vice President and Head, Immunology, Cardiovascular and Fibrosis Thematic Research Center and Head, Translational Medicine. “We feel that PathAI will be a productive collaborator given digital pathology represents a growing area for BMS, PathAI is a leader in the field, and the fact that we have a long-standing productive relationship with the company.”
Bristol Myers Squibb and PathAI will utilise AI pathology models with the potential to de-risk therapeutic development across the Bristol Myers Squibb’s pipeline by better identifying patient populations. In addition, Bristol Myers Squibb and PathAI plan to leverage these models to obtain key insights to help enhance patient segmentation in clinical trials across multiple disease indications. The companies are also collaborating on developing AI-powered diagnostics, most notably measuring CD8 T-cell infiltration across oncology disease areas. This powerful biomarker has demonstrated the potential to predict response to immunotherapy and possibly inform patient treatment decisions.
The announcement builds on the existing relationship between the companies that began in 2016 and has shown results in multiple areas. In June 2020, PathAI and Bristol Myers Squibb presented retrospective exploratory findings from completed clinical trials on AI-powered PD-L1 scoring, which identified more patients as PD-L1 positive compared to manual-based PD-L1 scoring. In November 2021, the companies jointly presented results from PathAI’s CD8 algorithm at The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting. Most recently in July 2022, the two companies jointly published new exploratory data in the Journal of Modern Pathology, comparing the use of AI-powered algorithms to manual IHC scoring PD-L1 expression in relation to outcomes across multiple cancer types from several clinical trials.
“Given the insights generated from past collaborations, we have entered into a long-term collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb to expand our use of machine learning models,” said Andy Beck, Co-founder, and CEO of PathAI. “We will build on our work using AI-based pathology in translational research and validate the use of this technology through clinical trials and diagnostic development. Our ultimate goal is to improve patient care through AI.”
To learn more, visit pathai.com.
