Currently, only about 30% of patients respond favorably to cancer immunotherapy (IO) drugs.  This low response rate creates an enormous burden on healthcare payers (spending $17B/year on failed treatments), and on patients who lose valuable time on the wrong therapy.  There is an urgent need for biomarkers to guide the use of IO drugs.

Several companies have launched PD-L1, T-Cell, and TMB assays.  However, all of these markers suffer from low prevalence, or low predictive power.  Identifying a prevalent and predictive marker has proven elusive due to the complexity of the underlying biology.  A “pan-agnostic” approach is needed to find a large set of biomarkers that can synergistically guide treatment.  

Magellan Bioanalytics has in-licensed a Mass Spec-based lab assay and combined it with internally-developed AI software.  Our technology enables the analysis of over 120,000 unique species in the blood (peptides, lipids, small molecules).  Magellan’s approach does not require an understanding of the underlying biology of IO therapy and response.  It analyzes the rich contents of the blood in a target-agnostic fashion to identify predictive market sets.  

Blood will be drawn on patients before IO treatment, which Magellan will analyze to identify biomarkers sets that predict response and adverse effects.