for the right cancer medicine, ask the tumor

A D V E R T I S E M E N T F E A T U R E

A D V E R T I S E R R E TA I N S S O L E R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y F O R C O N T E N T

SEngine Precision Medicinesenginemedicine.com

For the right cancer medicine, ask the tumorSeattle’s SEngine is using patient tumor samples to derive cancer organoids for accurateex vivo drug testing, target identification and drug development.

Although many people think of cancer as a singledisease, in reality, it is a collection of many differentdiseases. Each patient’s cancer is a unique mosaicof genetic and epigenetic alterations, which is whyit has been a challenge to identify the right course oftherapies for each patient. While multiple individualsmay share certain mutations, tumors differ from per-son to person and change as the disease progresses.The full surrounding context often determinesdrug responses.

As a result, the pharmaceutical industry has strug-gled to efficiently match new and existing cancerdrugs to all their potential patients. “Genomic testinghas helped only a minority of patients. That’s whywe founded SEngine, to use a functional approachto guide cancer treatments,” said Carla Grandori,CEO and co-founder of the company.

The PARIS TestThe company developed the PARIS Test, as thenext generation precision oncology functional testof patient-derived organoids (Fig. 1). The samplesare taken in a biopsy or during tumor resection, thencultured ex vivo into organoids that are seeded intowells for high-throughput screening. Using dataanalytics and revolutionary computational tools,SEngine can measure the cancer’s unique responseto a host of potential therapies, delivering a scoreto clinicians that can guide treatment decisions.

“As reported at ASCO 2021, the PARIS Test hasstrong predictive power as >70% of patients’ clinicalresponses match the organoid assay,” Grandori said.

SEngine has assembled a comprehensive cancerdrug library covering drug targets in oncology, whichit utilizes for both clinical testing and research ofpatient-derived cells. In poster presentations atthe American Association for Cancer Researchand American Society of Clinical Oncology 2021,SEngine and its academic partners showed howtheir approach works, compiling a map of patient-derived tumor samples and drugs predicted to beeffective—or not—for each. In a case study, thePARIS Test guided clinicians to a drug that wasapproved by the US Food and Drug Administration(FDA) only for certain hematological cancers as themost likely therapy to be effective in a patient withterminal ovarian cancer, who was not respondingto standard-of-care therapies. The patient had aremarkable response to this novel use of the therapy.SEngine’s drug-matching capabilities extend beyondphenotypic testing for individuals.

According to Grandori, “through partnerships withbiopharma companies, we’re both advancing noveldrug targets and maximizing possible indicationsfor drugs in development.” By using the PARIS Teston cohorts of patients, SEngine and its academic

partners have begun to identify patient popula-tions for existing cancer drugs, including for somedrugs that are limited to narrow clinical use today.SEngine’s intellectual property portfolio includespatents licensed from Fred Hutchinson CancerResearch Center identifying more than 100 cancertargets, which the company is using to help developnew therapeutic approaches.

SEngine was spun out from Fred Hutchinson in2015 by Grandori, V.K. Gadi, Brady Bernard, EduardoMéndez and Christopher Kemp, who combinedhave decades of experience in cancer moleculargenetics, computational biology and clinical oncol-ogy. “We’re at the convergence of innovations andknowledge in cancer pathways and drug targets,organoid derivation, phenotypic high-throughputtechnologies and revolutionary analytics,” Grandori

said. The company was inspired by Nobel Prize win-ner Lee Hartwell, who is now on SEngine’s Boardof Directors.

SEngine’s work on identifying synthetic lethalgenes as drug targets for oncogenic drivers suchas MYC and KRAS, with frequent amplification ormutations across many tumor types, has led to thecompany’s first target licensing agreement. SEnginewill use its organoid models to test its partner’s drugagainst that target, helping to develop a clinical can-didate. “We work with our pharma partners rightthrough clinical trials, complementing with pheno-typic screening at every step,” said Ulrich Mueller,SEngine’s CBO.

As the company seeks new partnerships withpharmaceutical companies—with capabilities tohelp both expand the label of existing medicines anddevelop novel therapies against its extensive cata-logue of oncotargets—it is also looking to commer-cialize the PARIS Test, which is CLIA certified acrosssolid tumors. To that end, the company plans to raiseseries B funding next year. “Our technology is allow-ing SEngine to move confidently forward both witha synergistic diagnostic and a drug developmentmodel. You can do that when you have a companybuilt on experience and knowledge, as well asgreat technology.”

Fig. 1 | The PARIS Test platform for diagnostics,drug development and pharma collaborations.The PARIS Test platform identifies personalizedtreatment options for patients with cancer, andbiomarker and cancer indications for pharmapartners. Results from patient-derived modelspopulate a database and a living biobank to beemployed for drug development. Cancerindications and biomarkers for both experimentalor FDA-approved drugs can be derived.

Ulrich Mueller, Chief Business OfficerSEngine Precision MedicineSeattle, WA, USATel: +1-206-225-7201Tel for PARIS Test inquiries:

+1-833-736-4163Email: uwmueller@senginemedicine.com

CON

TACT

“As reported at ASCO2021, the PARIS test has

strong predictive power as>70% of patients’ clinicalresponses match the organoidassay, a vast improvementover genomics-onlyapproaches

Carla Grandori,CEO & co-founder,

SEngine Precision Medicine

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