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Predictive Oncology to Acquire Quantitative Medicine

NEW YORK — Predictive Oncology said on Friday that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire biomedical analytics and computational biology firm Quantitative Medicine (QM).

Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close in the first half of the year, were not disclosed.

According to Predictive Oncology, QM has developed a computational drug discovery platform, called Core, that can predict the main effects of drugs on disease-associated targets.

"By coupling QM's Core predictive modeling platform with our tumor profiling expertise and data, we believe we can revolutionize the way precision therapies are developed," Predictive Oncology President and CEO Carl Schwartz said in a statement.

Eagan, Minnesota-based Predictive Oncology operates through three subsidiaries: Helomics, which provides tumor-analysis services for treatment personalization and new drug development; TumorGenesis, which is developing patient-derived tumor models for precision drug testing; and Skyline Medical, which markets a US Food and Drug Administration-approved system for automated medical fluid disposal.

Predictive Oncology said that QM's Core platform can be integrated into Helomics' artificial intelligence-based database of drug response profiles in order to build predictive models of how specific tumor types will respond to different treatments.

During late day trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Predictive Oncology were up nearly 3 percent at $2.815.

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