Tempus, a technology company focused on helping doctors personalize cancer treatment by collecting, sorting and analyzing clinical and molecular data, has formed a collaboration with cancer experts at the University of Chicago Medicine to accelerate the pace of discovery and improve and personalize treatment for breast cancer patients.
Tempus will provide molecular sequencing and analysis for patients being treated for breast cancer at the University of Chicago. Using machine learning and advanced bioinformatics, Tempus will analyze data from about 1,000 breast cancer patients and generate additional genomic data for a subset of those patients. The goal is to help the University of Chicago’s breast cancer specialist and research teams uncover novel patterns that can predict how patients will respond to treatment. Over time, this should lead to better patient outcomes.
“The University of Chicago Medicine is one of the country’s leading academic medical centers with a world-renowned breast cancer program,” said Eric Lefkofsky, co-founder and CEO of Tempus. “We are thrilled to partner with UCM in its efforts to advance treatment for patients battling this disease.”
Tempus will work directly with Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Olopade, MD, professor of medicine and human genetics and dean for global health at the University of Chicago. Dr. Olopade is a nationally renowned physician who specializes in cancer-risk assessment and individualized treatment for the most aggressive forms of breast cancer.
“Although breast cancer is among the most common cancers, there is relatively little accessible data on the millions of patients who have battled the disease. This forces too many physicians to make treatment decisions without the benefit of highly specific genetic information that could help them make better informed and precisely targeted decisions,” said Dr. Olopade. “We are excited to partner with Tempus on this initiative and eager to support its efforts to build the largest clinically annotated molecular data set in breast cancer. This could improve clinical care and lead to novel research opportunities.”
Although roughly a quarter of a million people are diagnosed each year with breast cancer in the United States, the largest publicly available dataset, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), includes just over 1,000 breast cancer patients who have been sequenced and annotated with critical clinical information, including treatment and outcomes data. The complexity of breast cancer genetics makes it difficult to detect therapeutically relevant patterns based on such a small data set.
The UCM-Tempus collaboration – working with the University of Chicago-based Genomic Data Commons, a next-generation platform that enables unprecedented data access, analysis and sharing for cancer research – is designed to expand and enhance the genetic resources available to breast cancer specialists and enable more precise decisions leading to highly personalized patient care.
The University of Chicago is home to one of only 47 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the U.S. designated by the National Cancer Institute – and one of only two in Illinois.
About Tempus:
Tempus is a Chicago-based technology company that is building the world’s largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful to physicians. “We enable physicians to deliver personalized cancer care for patients through our interactive analytical and machine-learning platforms. We provide genomic sequencing services and analyze molecular and therapeutic data to empower physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions. Our goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as we gather more data.
For more information, visit tempus.com and follow us on Facebook (Tempus Labs) and Twitter (@TempusLabs). For more information on Eric Lefkofsky, visit lefkofsky.com.
About the University of Chicago Medicine:
The University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, one of the nation's leading academic medical institutions, has been at the forefront of medical care since it first opened to patients in 1927. Today, it comprises the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine; the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division, a section committed to scientific discovery; and the University of Chicago Medical Center, consistently ranked among the best hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Twelve Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine.
