Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Israel vs Cancer

Kol HaKavod Israel | 24.10.2006 12:38 | Anti-racism | Bio-technology | Social Struggles | London | Oxford

Israeli biotechnology company pioneers new fight against cancer

Israeli biotechnology start-up Optimata has won a seal of approval for its new computerized virtual cancer patient technology from Cancer Research UK after a successful trial at Nottingham City Hospital.

In the joint clinical study held by Optimata and Cancer UK, it was found that Optimata's Virtual Cancer Patient Engine (VCP) enabled doctors to correctly predict how individual breast cancer patients will respond to chemotherapy treatment in 70 percent of cases. This is substantially higher than the current prediction accuracy of oncologists which is estimated to be 25-30 percent.

In the study, which involved 33 patients suffering advanced breast cancer that has spread to the liver, lymph nodes or lungs, researchers programmed the VCP to model how individual breast cancer patients would be expected to respond to the chemotherapy drugs docetaxel or doxorubicin. These drugs can be used on their own to treat a number of cancers, but have different effects in different people, making treatment unpredictable.

The VCP looked at how the drugs would affect the growth of the cancer, how the drugs would behave in the body, how the cancer cells would respond to the drugs, and which drug out of the two would work best in each patient based on the size of their tumors and the speed at which they were growing.

Researchers then compared the predictions of the VCP with the actual response of the patients to test the effectiveness of the technology.

"We found the computer program accurately predicted how the patients responded to treatment in around 70 percent of cases," said Dr. Stephen Chan, head of the Department of Clinical Oncology at Nottingham City Hospital and the director of the study.

"This was a very interesting early study that could potentially have a big impact on how cancer patients are treated in the future," added Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK. "Tailoring treatments to individual patients will ensure the best possible outcome for every patient. This is a hugely important area of cancer research."

Optimata was founded in 1999 by world-renowned biomathematician Prof. Zvia Agur, the company's chairman and chief scientific officer. It has been supported financially by private European investors, and Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which also paid for the Nottingham trial alongside Optimata.

Aside from the Nottingham City Hospital trial, the company is currently completing a bio-simulation clinical trial on breast cancer patients in collaboration with Soroka University Medical Center in Israel.

Optimata's VCP technology is based on a computer-generated method of accurately predicting how individual patients or patient populations will respond to a compound. The technology combines computer models of human physiology, specific diseases and the therapeutic impact of a compound. The in-silico technology enables drug developers to conduct experiments at an unprecedented scale, enabling an unlimited number of "virtual trials" to be carried out on an almost infinite combination of dosages, treatment schedules and patient population characteristics.

Aside from drug development, the technology can also be used for drug treatment repurposing - enabling drug developers to find new uses for drugs that have not proven successful in development - and in clinics and hospitals for improving the efficacy of current drug treatments on patients.

By predicting how a drug will affect a patient, the technology allows doctors to tailor treatment more accurately to ensure that patients receive the most appropriate and effective therapy for their particular disease. Aside from increasing the efficacy of treatments, this can also reduce the amount of drug a patient needs to take, easing the often-debilitating side effects.

Though the technology can be used for any number of diseases, Optimata is focusing initially on cancer.

"This is a huge field," said Agur.

The Nottingham City Hospital trial began in December 2004. "Every cancer is slightly different and every patient will respond to treatment differently. We wanted to find a way to predict how patients would respond to a particular drug in order to limit their side effects and give them the best chance of beating their disease," said Dr. Abhik Mukherjee, from the hospital.

In the wake of this trial, Agur said new Phase II clinical trials are planned, which will compare the efficacy of the VCP against that of physicians in finding the best drug regime for patients. Agur said she hopes some of these trials will take place in the UK.

The 15-person company based in Ramat Gan has collaboration agreements for the use of its technology with multinational pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co., and other drug companies. The start-up now plans a new round of fund-raising, and hopes to raise about $3 million.

"We are thrilled with the results of this study which validates our technology and offers new hope for cancer patients," said Guy Malchi, Optimata's CEO. "In the clinical setting our VCP technology offers the prospect of made-to-measure, safer and more cost-efficient use of therapies. In the global drug industry the VCP already is transforming drug development as more and more biopharmaceutical companies are using our technology to predict the outcome of drug candidates."

"The results of this study show the enormous potential the VCP has as a tool for treatment individualization," added Agur.

Kol HaKavod Israel

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech