Wetherby-based life sciences company Avacta Therapeutics has announced a collaboration with tech company Tempus AI to use artificial intelligence to enhance its development of drugs to treat cancerous tumours. 

The collaboration will provide Avacta access to Tempus’ multimodal datasets comprising primary tumour samples and associated clinical data from over 200,000 patients across a broad range of cancer indications. 

The collaboration is designed to use the data to characterize the deep biology of the tumor microenvironment and fibroblast activation protein (FAP) activity upon which Avacta’s ‘pre|CISION’ technology is based.

Avacta also said it has recently expanded its platform with the addition of two new preclinical programs: AVA6103 and AVA7100. AVA6103 is a novel peptide drug designed to deliver its powerful anti-tumor effects directly to the tumor while minimizing exposure to healthy tissues. AVA7100 is an Affimer drug conjugate, aimed at cancers with varying levels of FAP expression, including low FAP. 

Avacta said it plans to use insights it gains to further enhance the pre|CISION platform through the identification of the full addressable patient populations for its clinical programs. Tempus’s analytical support and computational biology experts will collaborate in the data analysis with the Avacta team.

Christina Coughlin, CEO of Avacta, said: “Our pipeline of pre|CISION oncology programs will benefit greatly from an extensive understanding of the tumor microenvironment, FAP biology and both high- and low-FAP expression across solid tumor settings.”

“The Tempus AI real-world database and industry-leading AI capabilities will enable us to better assess the specific patient population most likely to respond to our pre|CISION therapies, enabling faster, smarter clinical development with the highest probability of success.”