Sophia Genetics to Collaborate with GE Healthcare to Advance Precision Cancer Care

Sophia Genetics to Collaborate with GE Healthcare to Advance Precision Cancer Care
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Sophia Genetics is continuing its mission to become a big player in the precision medicine, big data and AI space with the announcement of an agreement to collaborate with medtech giant GE Healthcare this week to improve cancer care.

The Swiss firm will help GE Healthcare to better target and match treatments to the type of cancer and a patient’s genomic profile.

Sophia, which is based in Lausanne, but also has offices in the U.S. and France, has expertise in data-driven medicine and is known for the SOPHiA DDM software platform. This is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and is currently used by more than 750 hospitals and laboratories around the world to analyze complex phenotypic and genomic data and provide diagnostic and treatment insights to researchers and healthcare professionals.

The platform is flexible and customizable for different labs and hospitals and is frequently updated by the company. For example, earlier this month it added a new Comprehensive Genomic Profiling workflow to maximize the use of the Illumina TSO500 assay.

GE Healthcare already has expertise in cancer-related medical imaging, in clinical workflows and processes, and deep learning AI algorithms for image reconstruction and image segmentation, but wants to partner with Sophia to make use of the company’s expertise in data-driven medicine, according to a joint company statement. Few other details were released about the partnership, the value of which is also undisclosed.

“The integration of genomics-based artificial intelligence into oncology workflow solutions would be a major breakthrough for integrated cancer medicine and for future clinical research, which increasingly depend on the ability to select those patients most likely to respond to new therapies,” said Jan Makela, President & CEO, Imaging at GE Healthcare.

Cancer care and diagnosis is increasingly being driven by complex data sets that include genomic data and Sophia and GE Healthcare are hoping to capitalize on this. AI in precision medicine and healthcare has also advanced dramatically in recent years, due to advances in the technology such as improved image recognition and also increased interest from investors, at least partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This collaboration adds to a number of others made by Sophia, including with Hitachi earlier this year, and MGI and Twist Biosciences, last year, among others.

Sophia has also done well on the fundraising front, raising $110 million last year in its sixth and biggest round to date to help it expand further into the U.S. and Asian markets. It also announced last week that it has filed a registration statement (Form F-1) with the SEC prior to launching on the Nasdaq under the ticker $SOPH, although has not released other information on its planned IPO as yet.