NoRD Bio’s team of experts in the assessment of tumor heterogeneity and evolution has launched a program to aid pharma and biotech companies in cancer drug development. Using their proprietary SmartRD platform, NoRD Bio is shedding light on a significant blindspot in cancer drug research: the inherent heterogeneity and evolution of individual tumors.
“Running cancer drug trials without insight into individual tumor heterogeneity and evolution can compromise measurable drug response and can be a recipe for failure because of unexplained resistance. We are excited to fill this gap with proven, cost efficient insights. We believe our approach redefines the paradigm of cancer monitoring in a way that liquid biopsy companies cannot,” states Dr. Ida Pavlichenko, CEO of NoRD Bio.
“At NoRD Bio, we utilize the heterogeneity inherent to every tumor to reveal the makeup, the subclonal structure, of the disease and how it evolves under treatment. Our cutting-edge cancer detection and precision oncology platform, SmartRD, delivers genomic and multi-omic insights, circulating free DNA analysis, single-cell RNA sequencing, and data storage solutions,” states Dr. Dimitri Livitz, NoRD Bio’s Service Program Lead.
Cancers in individuals mutate rapidly all the time. Individual tumors are genetically diverse – a biopsy from one part of the tumor is likely to have a different genetic profile than a biopsy from another part of the same tumor. Cancers are also constantly evolving, with genetic profiles of the disease changing over time. This evolution often leads to resistance, or even creates susceptibility to treatments not currently being used.
In fact, to develop new and improved cancer drugs and to improve care for cancer patients, we must understand the genetic variation and evolution of cancers in individual patients. For patients, this means understanding how the sequenced variants fit together to provide an informed treatment strategy. For drug developers, this means not “flying blind” by testing drug candidates without insight into the genetic diversity of the cancers being targeted.
NoRD Bio is filling these gaps in a simple and practical way. NoRD’s services can significantly enrich the results of new trials, can be seamlessly integrated in-protocol to active studies, and can provide insights into completed trials to better focus ongoing research. NoRD’s SmartRD platform provides ultra-sensitive, cost-effective multi-omic analysis across all major bodily fluids and tissues with unparalleled genomic expertise. Pragmatic applications of NoRD’s platform include heterogeneity-informed biomarker development, effective cohort size expansion through subclonal reconstruction, prediction of how individual cell populations will contribute to response under treatment, and improved resistance detection.
NoRD Bio an innovator in cancer heterogeneity and evolution analyses and insights, and is developing cost-effective ultra-sensitive assays to detect early signs of cancer relapse and recurrence. Our cutting-edge cancer detection and precision oncology technology, developed with academic partners and supported by the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, features the proprietary disease-monitoring platform SmartRD. We collaborate with pharma and biotech companies on genomic solutions, providing deeper biological insights to accelerate the development of more effective, patient-centered therapies while reducing drug development costs.