Match patients with experimental drugs in clinical development
Matching patients with experimental drugs in clinical trials is challenging.
Some cancer patients are unresponsive to the existing approved treatments and need to turn to experimental drugs. Meanwhile, pharma companies need to recruit the right patients to test their new drugs in clinical trials.
In clinical trials, patients are matched with studies that evaluate experimental drugs for a win-win situation:
Patients have a higher chance of survival by receiving the most suitable drugs.
Pharma companies are more likely to have regulatory approval since they have patients who are likely to respond to their drugs.
To screen and match patients with new drugs, we test patient microtumors against the treatment(s) of interest, and measure both response and drug mechanism of action (e.g., cancer killing by immune cells)