ARMONK, N.Y., Sept.
17 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that
Caris Life Sciences is using IBM technical computing and storage
technology to accelerate the company's molecular profiling services
for cancer patients. These services deliver critically important
information to help oncologists develop tailored therapeutic plans
for each patient's unique cancer, which could lead to better health
outcomes and reduced costs to the healthcare system in general.
Today, optimal cancer care requires sophisticated integration of
diverse molecular profiling technologies, which analyze the
alterations in molecular signaling pathways in a patient's tumor to
best match them to potential treatment options or clinical trials
by sifting through patient case history treatments, clinical trial
data, medical literature, and other emerging evidence. This
poses information overload challenges for oncologists who need to
make treatment decisions in real time. Today's clinicians need
access to sophisticated big data infrastructure and analytical
algorithms to optimize clinical decisions.
To help meet this need, Caris is using multiple technologies to
develop world-class molecular profiling services that help doctors
advance evidence-based, personalized treatment options for cancer
patients. It has tested more than 65,000 cancer patients for 70
different molecular markers using multiple technology
platforms. These markers are then correlated with 55
FDA-approved cancer therapies and hundreds of clinical trials
agents.
The Caris tumor profiling database is one of the largest
datasets in the application of advanced molecular profiling
technologies to support clinicians in delivering personalized
treatment recommendations – or precision oncology.
"Widespread access to "Big Data" resources is revolutionizing
how cancer is diagnosed and treated and requires sophisticated data
management and computational capabilities for annotation and
analysis," said George Poste, DVM,
Ph.D., Vice Chairman, Caris Life Sciences. "Molecular profiling
data will soon be measured in the terabyte per patient level. It
also has to be stored for years and be organized in a manner that
facilitates deep analytic evaluation and ensures data
security."
Working with IBM and premier IBM Business Partner Re-Store,
Caris has developed a scalable, data-aware and secure
infrastructure with IBM systems and servers for complex molecular
profiling analysis. This enhanced infrastructure leverages the
broadest range of IBM technologies in the life sciences industry.
With the support of IBM technical computing and software defined
storage technology, Caris can now make recommendations on 55
potentially actionable drug to molecular target associations as a
result of being able to profile both genomic and proteomic data– a
significant increase over the current 19 therapeutic
recommendations using genomic information alone.
By adding IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and code name Elastic
Storage to its HPC environment, Caris is able to access and process
massive amounts of data at a significantly faster pace.
"Precision cancer diagnosis and treatment requires the ability
to process and analyze staggering amounts of genomic and other
clinical data with scale and speed, and to accelerate this work, we
need to provide clinicians and analysts with technical computing
platforms," said Frank N. Lee,
Ph.D., Lead Architect, Genomic Medicine, IBM. "IBM technology has
helped Caris handle this data volume with greater speed, efficiency
and scalability, and at the same time maintain the required
security and reliability essential for handling medical and health
data."
Learn more about this story on IBM's A Smarter Planet blog:
http://ibm.co/1qQwJ9h.
View a video for more details on this story:
http://bit.ly/1m8lo4E
About IBM
Learn more about IBM life sciences at:
ibm.com/lifesciences
Learn more about IBM technical computing systems at:
ibm.com/technicalcomputing
About Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences is a
leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of
precision medicine through quality and innovation. As the
first commercial mover in comprehensive molecular profiling in
oncology, Caris Molecular Intelligence™ is an industry vanguard,
with 65,000-plus patients profiled and counting. Ordered by nearly
7,000 oncologists in 63 countries, Molecular Intelligence
correlates molecular data generated from a patient's tumor with
biomarker/drug associations derived from clinical cancer
literature. Using a variety of advanced and clinically-relevant
technologies, Caris provides oncologists with the most clinically
actionable information to help them personalize treatment for
cancer patients. This multi-technology approach enables Caris to
provide therapeutic guidance for 55 drug associations, compared to
the 19 that can be found through use of next-generation sequencing
alone. The company is also developing a series of blood tests based
on its proprietary Carisome® TOP platform — a revolutionary
blood-based testing technology for diagnosis, prognosis, and
theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Headquartered in
Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences
offers services throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and other international markets. To
learn more, please visit www.carislifesciences.com.
Media Contacts:
Christine Douglass
IBM Media Relations
415-545-6737
cgdouglass@us.ibm.com
Chaiti Sen
IBM Media Relations
212-671-9525
csen@us.ibm.com
David Patti
Caris Life Sciences Media Relations
908-421-5971
dpatti@jfkhealth.com
Video -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Pi-twMGuU&feature=youtu.be
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO
SOURCE IBM