COTA, PreciseDx and Baptist Health South Florida announced a collaboration to assess and validate the performance of the artificial intelligence (AI) -enabled PreciseBreast™ (PDxBr) test that predicts the likelihood of invasive breast cancer (IBC) recurrence.
One in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. An accurate understanding of a patient’s prognosis is needed to inform treatment decisions. Risk assessment to determine the likelihood of breast cancer recurrence is a critical step in characterizing a cancer diagnosis. While breast cancer patients have benefited from numerous gene-expression tests in recent years, these tools have documented limitations and can be expensive. Often reporting within a two-to-four-week timeframe, gene-expression testing can lead to delayed treatment decisions that are critical to patient management.
“AI has the potential to augment human learning and improve the accuracy and precision of cancer diagnostics and treatments,” said Dr. C.K. Wang, chief medical officer, COTA. “It is critical that we evaluate these tools against the current standard of care to validate their efficacy and build trust in AI and new technologies.”
As long-term collaborators, COTA and Baptist Health South Florida will analyze the performance of PreciseDx’s clinical risk tool using curated real-world data. They will compare the results of PreciseBreast™ to traditional pathology reviews and to 21-gene assay results to validate its performance. If the validation study is successful, Baptist Health South Florida will offer this AI-enabled testing to patients with IBC with the goal of expanding access to innovations in cancer care. Additional benefits include access to results in 48 hours and an 80% reduction in cost.
Current pathology practices are manual and often subjective. The PreciseBreast™ test is designed to improve clinical decision-making with AI-derived insights that give physicians and patients a clear understanding of the risk of recurring IBC.
“AI has allowed us to take a giant leap forward in the accuracy, affordability and accessibility of tools to better understand and treat breast cancer,” said Gerardo Fernandez, M.D., co-founder and chief scientific officer of PreciseDx. “Access to COTA’s best-in-class, real-world data that provides comprehensive insights into the cancer journeys of diverse patient populations will power more advanced and accurate AI learnings.”
“This collaboration underscores our commitment to advancing cancer diagnostics with the latest AI-driven solutions,” said Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, M.D., MBA, FASCO, deputy director, Fernandez Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, chief of medical oncology, and chief scientific officer of Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida. “By combining state-of-the-art technology with real-world evidence, we are working to not only enhance our diagnostic precision but also improve accessibility that may ultimately empower both patients and physicians with timely, actionable insights.”