NEW YORK – Caris Life Sciences and the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group said Thursday that they have inked a multiyear partnership initially focused on profiling early-stage breast cancer tumors.
As the first project within the partnership, Caris will use its comprehensive genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic profiling technology, as well as its artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms, to analyze the breast cancer tumor samples collected in ECOG-ACRIN's TAILORx clinical trial.
ECOG-ACRIN designed and conducted the TAILORx study — short for the Trial Assigning Individualized Options for Treatment — with support from the National Cancer Institute and its Cooperative Groups. The goal of the study was to determine whether estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer patients could avoid adjuvant chemotherapy after having their tumors resected.
The monumental takeaway, presented during the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, was that patients could indeed avoid adjuvant chemo so long as they were either under 50, premenopausal, or post-menopausal with a breast recurrence score beneath 25 on Exact Sciences' Oncotype DX test.
In conducting the TAILORx trial, ECOG-ACRIN researchers also collected patients' breast tumor samples, building out a biorepository to continue their research.
The Caris collaboration will involve profiling these samples to better understand risk stratification, recurrence prediction, and the drivers of breast cancer racial disparities. Caris will perform whole-exome sequencing and whole-transcriptome sequencing on nearly 10,000 early-stage breast cancer tumor samples in the repository, then use its artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms to draw conclusions from the profiling tests paired with 11 years of patient follow-up data.
TAILORx investigators plan to continue following patients' outcomes for 20 years. Caris and ECOG-ACRIN said they will share data with the public once it's complete.
"Given the innovative capabilities offered by Caris, analysis of TAILORx biospecimens with cutting-edge AI approaches provides a great opportunity to discover superior biomarkers for risk stratification, prediction of recurrence, and better understanding of racial disparities," Mitchell Schnall, group co-chair of ECOG-ARIN, said in a statement. "The size and impact of TAILORx makes it a perfect study to lead off this collaboration."
As part of the collaboration, ECOG-ACRIN has also joined the Caris Precision Oncology Alliance, a network of cancer centers and research consortia focused on advancing tumor profiling and standardizing molecular testing strategies.