Precision Medicine Group: Precision for Medicine

Scott Marshall, Ph.D. Managing Director, Translational Informatics & Diagnostic Sciences

We sat down with Scott Marshall, Managing Director, Translational Informatics and Diagnostic Sciences, and Chad Clark, President of Precision for Medicine to learn more about their growth and plans for 2018 and beyond.

"We have had a very successful 2017, and we are thrilled with industry advancements in bioinformatics and our own success in this area," says Scott Marshall. During 2017, Precision Medicine Group, expanded its translational informatics footprint into Europe with the opening of new offices and continued to expand their proprietary technology platform, "a game changer for translational scientists."

What are some of the trends that you expect to have an impact on Bioinformatics?

Chad: We have seen transformative trends emerging over the last five years in the space of translational research and biomarker-guided drug development, many in the area of advanced biological data production such as whole genome sequencing, immuno sequencing, complex flow cytometry, and proteomics to name a few. These developments are driving the need for new technology platforms to support the management and analysis of this high-content, high-throughput data. From the perspective of translational research, the diversity in assays being run in early-phase studies continues to expand, especially in the space of immuno-oncology. As part of this evolution of biomarker-guided drug development, we are seeing that new types of data are being generated to support clinical trial decision-making. Examples include dose selection or patient stratification and the characterization of mechanistic properties used to support regulatory submissions.

All of this points to the need for more advanced tools with greater rigor and regulation. With the increases in regulation and the implications on patient care, the time spent managing these data is quite extensive. By our estimates, 60 to 80 percent of time is spent on data management-related tasks, as opposed to analysis to derive insights, and with millions of dollars spent on running assays, much of the value is often left on the table. This is why we built our biomarker data management platform that is focused on more rapidly synthesizing, assimilating, and analyzing biomarker data, which can help reduce the cost of clinical trials and make therapies available to patients sooner.

What are some challenges CIOs in your industry face?

Chad: Advances in genomics, proteomics, and other areas have made the production of data much easier, cheaper, and subsequently more ubiquitous across the industry. However, managing the wealth of data—often greater than 10s of millions of data points for a single study—is a significant pain point. Today, our clients are overwhelmed just in the collection and reconciliation of this information and have very little bandwidth to actually extract valuable insights. As CIOs and their informatics teams are using our biomarker data management platform to synthesize and interpret this information, they are seeing significant cost reductions and getting insights faster with reduced risk. Of course, security, scalability, and regulatory compliance remain significant concerns for our clients and, therefore, a key focus of ours.