NEW YORK – Precision medicine software firm BostonGene said Tuesday that it has signed a clinical research collaboration agreement with the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center to support multiple research projects aimed at cancer immunotherapy development.
The partners' first project will focus on personalized cancer vaccines, using BostonGene's computational algorithms to identify cancer specific neoantigens and profile tumor immune activation status using genomic, transcriptomic, and imaging datasets.
Investigators aim to identify targetable molecular alterations, evaluate gene expression and gene signatures, characterize cellular components in the tumor microenvironment, estimate tumor heterogeneity, and predict neoantigens and tumor clonality.
Privately held BostonGene emerged from stealth mode in May 2019 and since then has announced a number of other research partnerships, most focused on cancer biomarker discovery.
"We look forward to using BostonGene's technology to help in our work to better understand the mechanisms of cancer neoantigen recognition and to the discovery of new immunotherapy treatment options," Gerald Linette, a professor of medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and clinical director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, said in a statement.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.