Biostate AI and Weill Cornell Join Forces to Harness AI for Tailored Leukemia Therapies
In a groundbreaking move that combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) with cutting-edge medical research, Biostate AI, a leader in artificial intelligence-driven RNA sequencing, has announced a strategic collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine. The partnership aims to leverage advanced AI technologies to create personalized assessments of patient disease prognosis and evolution, with an initial focus on leukemia. The collaboration will make use of Weill Cornell’s extensive biorepository of bone marrow and blood samples, which are critical to advancing the study of leukemia and other blood cancers.
At the heart of this partnership is Biostate AI’s proprietary technology: barcode-integrated reverse transcription (BIRT). BIRT, a novel RNA sequencing (RNAseq) technology, enables the analysis of RNA expression from patient samples at a large scale. The results of these analyses will serve as the foundation for training and refining an AI model, which will be built using RNA expression data as its “language.” This innovative AI system, based on transformer models, will focus on developing sophisticated tools to perform acute myeloid leukemia (AML) subtype stratification, disease prognosis, and therapy selection.
The collaboration represents a significant leap forward in personalized medicine for leukemia, particularly AML, which is a complex and aggressive disease that poses both diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. The efforts aim to create a more nuanced understanding of each patient’s disease, using AI to predict the most effective treatment options, whether they involve chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, or targeted therapies like BCL-2 inhibitors.
The Need for Precision in Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine has become an increasingly important aspect of modern healthcare, but current approaches often rely on a limited set of biomarkers to guide treatment decisions. David Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Biostate AI, and former Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University, emphasized that traditional methods tend to fall short when it comes to the complexity of human health and disease. “Current personalized medicine approaches look only at one or a few key biomarkers for each disease,” Zhang explained. “This results in poor predictive accuracy because every patient is different, and we are not looking at the whole picture of a patient’s health or disease.”
Zhang’s vision for Biostate AI is to fundamentally transform patient treatment through AI-driven precision, moving beyond the traditional approaches to treatment selection. By analyzing comprehensive RNA expression profiles, Biostate AI seeks to deliver decisions that more accurately reflect a patient’s unique disease characteristics, leading to better treatment outcomes. These decisions could ultimately result in patients living longer and healthier lives by ensuring they receive the most appropriate therapies, such as bone marrow transplants or BCL-2 inhibitors, based on a deeper, more accurate understanding of their condition.
A Groundbreaking Pilot Phase
The partnership will initially focus on leukemia, with the team at Biostate AI working closely with Dr. Gail J. Roboz, Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, and a leading expert in hematology and leukemia research. In the pilot phase, the two organizations will collaborate to develop a prototype AI model that will focus on acute myeloid leukemia (AML). To build this model, the teams will use 1,000 retrospective bone marrow and blood samples from AML patients, sourced from Weill Cornell’s extensive biorepository.
Once these initial technical performance milestones are met, the collaboration will expand, incorporating up to 50,000 additional samples. These samples will include longitudinal data from individual patients, allowing the team to develop more refined and definitive AI models. This step will enable the AI system to consider the evolution of disease over time and provide more accurate prognostic information, thereby improving the ability to select personalized therapies for each patient.
Dr. Roboz expressed her enthusiasm for the potential of this partnership: “AML is an aggressive, biologically heterogeneous malignancy that poses both diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. My team and I look forward to investigating the potential for Biostate AI’s approach to help personalize treatment selection for AML patients.”
Cornell University’s Role in Advancing Translational Research
The agreement between Biostate AI and Weill Cornell Medicine was facilitated by Cornell University’s Center for Technology Licensing (CTL), an organization dedicated to bridging the gap between academic research and real-world applications. Dr. Lisa Placanica, Senior Managing Director of CTL at Weill Cornell, underscored the significance of this partnership in advancing the university’s mission of translating academic research into practical, impactful solutions in the healthcare industry. “This agreement reflects Cornell’s commitment to fostering industry partnerships that translate academic research into real-world impact,” she said.
Weill Cornell Medicine has a long history of fostering translational research and innovation in precision medicine, and this partnership with Biostate AI is a testament to its ongoing efforts to bring groundbreaking scientific discoveries to patients in need. The collaboration promises to significantly advance the field of personalized leukemia treatment, opening the door to more effective, tailored therapies for a range of blood cancers.
Biostate AI’s Technology and Future Directions
Biostate AI, founded in 2023, has rapidly established itself as a leading innovator in the field of AI for RNA sequencing. Since its inception, the company has patented over 12 novel technologies in RNAseq and AI, and it has forged partnerships with more than 100 research groups across the United States. These collaborations have allowed Biostate AI to refine its BIRT technology, which is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional RNA sequencing techniques by enabling more comprehensive and scalable analysis of gene expression.
Ashwin Gopinath, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Biostate AI, emphasized that the company’s approach represents a bold new direction for disease prognosis and personalized medicine. “Disease prognosis represents an important new direction for Biostate AI, and unlocks applications never before possible with AI as a field,” Gopinath said. “Traditional RNA biomarker discovery has led to the development of standard-of-care tests like OncotypeDx for breast cancer, but this approach has failed to generalize to other diseases or even to other cancers. By taking on a modern AI more massive data approach, we believe that Biostate AI is developing a general-purpose technology possible for improving outcomes for patients suffering from all diseases.”
The partnership with Weill Cornell Medicine marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Biostate AI, with the potential to revolutionize the way diseases like leukemia are diagnosed and treated. By integrating AI with comprehensive genomic data, the collaboration aims to create more precise, data-driven tools for disease management, offering the promise of better outcomes for patients across a wide range of conditions.
As Biostate AI and Weill Cornell Medicine work to develop and validate these AI models, their efforts could pave the way for a future in which personalized medicine becomes the gold standard in treating complex diseases, ensuring that each patient receives the best possible care based on their unique genetic profile and disease characteristics. This partnership marks a significant step forward in the ongoing journey toward precision medicine, offering hope for millions of patients who may benefit from these advances in technology and science.
