CancerMate From Italy, A New Frontier in Cancer Prognosis

Cancer treatments are frequently inaccurate as they can fail to precisely match with each specific patient/disease coupling. CancerMate (formerly CAPTURE) is an application that applies to this complex scenario of cancer growth and fight: we aim to reduce the cost of cancer treatment for the society as a whole. Heading to convergence of diagnostic imaging, assay data and biomathematics, we aim to computational prognosis of tumors. Built for oncologists and surgeons in hospitals, and researchers in pharmaceutical and health care equipment industries, CancerMate is a game-changing tool, inspired by human physiopathology: CancerMate empowers the informed decisions on possible outcomes and optimal response to therapy, for each situation at stake.

Link to online video (if available) 

Your products and services 

CancerMate casts a portal of cancer proliferation and its fighting drugs within the representation of a real patient’s body. Featuring a multiplicity of tuning parameters, as consolidated and validated by the interaction with medical doctors and researchers, CancerMate facilitates the administration of the most promising clinical therapy to the specific situation.

Starting from diagnostic images of a given avascular cancer in a real patient, CancerMate models can run at low cost on standard desktop computers, any proliferation/therapy scenarios on that patient’s replica with our virtual reality (VR) engine. With this, CancerMate predicts the evolution in time (into days or months ahead) of that particular cancer, under a number of hypotheses (such as the choice of a VEGF inhibitor, whose pharmacokinetics/dynamics features can be computationally available). Currently tested in relevant environment (a real hepatocellular carcinoma, and several hon-Hodgkin lymphomas), CancerMate creates immersive experiences when complemented by head-mounted-displays for augmented reality (AR), ultimately enforcing medical doctors’ judgement-knowledge on the therapy outcome.

Your success factors 

Cooperation with IRCSS-CROB (the Oncological Hospital of the Basilicata Region @ Rionero in Vulture – Italy) is currently ongoing. We were selected among the most successful enterprises by INNOLABS project (Horizon2020) being rewarded a Proof of Excellence.

Your factors differentiating and disruptive compared to the existing 

With its easy-to-use graphical front-end and VR/AR ability, CancerMate can provide easy access to every tuning knob and disease outcome in 3D representations, for unparalleled informed and immersed decision strategies in personalized oncology. CancerMate will also yield a more favorable economic outcomes for the health administration bodies: down to about 30% in some cases of breast cancer, for example, when the surgery is avoided due to therapy optimization.

Your business model (how do you make money?)

CancerMate‘s value chain is described by the following list of reference stakeholders:

• • cancer patientship, who is the final indirect beneficiary of the product, but obviously cannot operate directly on the product
  • clinical and research oncologists, who will use CancerMate to improve the administration of the best personalized therapy. Using VR/AR before and after chemotherapy, the models predicts how well the drug is working and compares with similar cases
  • oncological surgeons, who will use CancerMate to visualize outcome and surgery environment. Knowledge of the sites of tumor spreading significantly impacts on the decision whether to treat partially on entirely (ie. for breast cancer, partial lumpectomy or mastectomy)
  • pharmaceutical and chemical researchers, involved in therapy research, who will exercise CancerMate to increase their ability to validate their findings and create in a totally-sustainable way new pharmaceutical formulations, to greatly reduce the time to clinical deployment
  • health care device industries, involved in diagnostic imaging, who will ship CancerMate alongside their rig to increase their ability to new immersive situation for clinical doctors and surgeons
  • hospital and health administrations, that will be interested in the economy outcome generated by CancerMate, yielding for significant savings when the optimal therapy is administered

All models generated with CancerMate will reside in the cloud on one or more servers. Access and use will be done through a user profile, for free (trial) for 1 month, or by a fee-for-service model. Possible subscriptions will be based on packets of hours of use (up to 50 hours, CancerMate-Flat50, up to 100 hours, CancerMate-Flat100, or else without limits, CancerMate-Premium).

A few words about your competitors

To date, the only project that may compare directly to CancerMate, is the “Oncosimulator P-medicine” (http://p-medicine.eu/tools/oncosimulator/). Developed in the 2011-2015 period, the project has been carried out by a broad partnership that involved, among others, universities institutes, biomedical companies, softwarehouses and clinical institutes. The Table below unfolds the differences and analogies between “Oncosimulator” and CancerMate. It is seen that the later only will allow for significant reductions of predictions costs, requiring much less maintenance effort with respect to its alternative, and offers true personalized analyses based on its ability to work on patient’s diagnostic images.

Your website 

http://www2.unibas.it/cfdnova/index.php/it/spinoff