California-based Notable announced on Thursday that it has entered a partnership with the MDS Foundation, which is dedicated to providing insight to families on future clinical trials for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).
Notable will offer a grant to support the MDS Foundation’s education and advocacy efforts, and both companies will work closely to engage physicians, biopharmaceutical companies, health authorities and clinical trial organizations to collaborate on clinical trial designs. Ideally, both groups want to match patients to more effective drug therapies and get therapies approved faster for the benefit of all patients.
“Notable has breakthrough technology for accelerating drug development and precision medicine, matching patients with effective therapies,” said Tracey Iraca, Executive Director of the MDS Foundation. “We are excited to work closely with Notable to continue to learn more about what its platform will mean for MDS research and help translate important information about MDS developments and trials to our community.”
The MDS Foundation intends to connect the Notable team with MDS research through its Centers of Excellence network. Notable’s staff will have access to information on available clinical trials, as well as new research and treatment options.
“The MDS Foundation is paramount for communicating and educating the MDS community about groundbreaking research and treatments in this field,” said Laurie Heilmann, CEO of Notable. “The combination of our scientific technology platform and the MDS Foundation’s charter will help advance functional precision medicine while educating patients and families about the latest clinical trials available.”
Notable is known for its clinically validated artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which advances cancer drug development at a fraction of traditional costs. Its approach combines AI with an automated lab to determine which drugs will be most effective for treating specific types of cancer. In a clinical trial, Notable achieved an 84% overall accuracy rate in predicting patient response to prescribed drugs.
Notable was started by Matt De Silva, who initially began the company to help his father, who was living with brain cancer.
“Patients with aggressive cancers are in a race against time, but if we can use technology to identify the best drug or drug combination at the time of diagnosis, there is a much better chance those therapies will work,” said De Silva back in 2019. “We are eager to scale the results we’ve generated with our academic collaborators by expanding our AI platform and automated laboratory to more cancer types.
Notable announced a $40 million Series B round of funding in July of last year. The round was led by B Capital Group and LifeForce Capital, and it brought the company’s total funding to over $55 million.
“We’ve seen what Notable’s technology platform can do to predict patient responses to cancer drugs,” said Adam Seabrook of B Capital Group. “They affect patients today by finding the best therapy for each specific patient in a way that other precision medicine tools can’t. That same platform is also ideally suited to identify new therapies and accelerate their progress through clinical trials. We are thrilled to invest our time and resources to help Notable deliver precision medicine to patients today and accelerate research on the next generation of therapies in the fight against cancer.”
Notable’s approach has been validated by several independent clinical studies conducted by establishments including Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, Rady Children’s Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital.