Caris’ novel approach leverages the aggregate strength of its state-of-the-art platform to unlock previously inaccessible drug targets in oncology
IRVING, Texas, January 5, 2023 – Caris Life Sciences® (Caris), the leading molecular science and technology company actively developing and delivering innovative solutions to revolutionize healthcare, today announced the expansion of Caris Discovery, a proprietary, multi-omics target discovery engine designed to unlock otherwise inaccessible targets in areas of high unmet clinical need, with a goal of delivering transformational patient impact.
Caris Discovery is a disease-agnostic discovery engine that aims to identify novel drug targets through the combination of its differentiated capabilities and assets, including the interrogation of primary patient tissue, a proprietary aptamer-based proteomic profiling platform, unparalleled in silico analyses, and cutting-edge research experimentation at Caris’ dedicated 59,000 square foot Target Discovery Lab.
“Despite numerous breakthroughs in oncology, many patients with cancer desperately need novel medicines to improve their outcomes and quality of life. Discovering new cancer medicines remains extremely challenging, and one of the biggest stumbling blocks is the scarcity of viable targets,” said David Spetzler, M.S., Ph.D., MBA, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Caris Life Sciences. “Building on our strength in molecular profiling, our unparalleled repository of real-world patient samples and our industry-leading clinico-genomic database, we have spent years investing in the formation of Caris Discovery, an unmatched platform to identify and validate differentiated, modality-agnostic targets for for the development of precision medicines and therapies.”
Caris’ proprietary ADAPT™ biotargeting system is able to identify many cancer-specific proteins that would elude classical identification methods, increasing the potential to identify truly novel targets. ADAPT deploys an extensive and unbiased library of aptamers – single-stranded molecules of DNA that can bind to almost any cellular target – to uncover targets in patient tissue samples. Identified targets are validated and characterized for their disease and biological relevance through a suite of wet lab interrogations including expression profiles, epitope mapping, functional screening, phenotypic analyses, and in vitro model systems.
Caris Discovery can be tailored to any therapeutic modality, including antibody-directed therapies, small molecule, targeted protein degradation, synthetic lethal interactions, and neo-antigen directed approaches amongst others.
“Historically, the vast majority of potential drug targets were considered undruggable,” said Milan Radovich, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Precision Medicine Officer of Caris Life Sciences. “With the proliferation of new therapeutic modalities, the universe of targets for cancer medicines has vastly expanded. The combination of Caris ADAPT with our extensive library of real-world clinico-genomics and tissue samples gives our partners exclusive access to difficult-to-find targets within this expanded universe. Ultimately, these targets will lead to novel medicines that transform outcomes for patients with cancer.”
Industry Collaborations
Caris Discovery is already gaining traction in the marketplace. In August 2022, Caris entered a multi-year strategic option and license agreement with Xencor, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, to apply Caris Discovery to identify novel targets for bispecific antibody drug candidates. Just five months later, Caris and Xencor expanded their target discovery collaboration to broaden the scope to additional cancer types with significant unmet need.
“Xencor and Caris share the goal to bring potentially transformational therapies to patients with cancer. We are impressed by their discovery capabilities and are excited to deepen our collaboration with additional tumor histologies,” said John Desjarlais, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Xencor. “Caris has built a unique target discovery platform, coupled with deep genomics information, that will enhance our ability to create and evaluate a new generation of XmAb® bispecific and multi-specific antibodies, including T cell engagers, NK cell engagers and other modalities.”
“Caris is generating a large number of targets across histologies, that once characterized, can be purposefully matched to a therapeutic modality and ideally to a biopharma company that has the expertise and resources to take forward a program into clinical trials,” said Brian Lamon, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer of Caris Life Sciences. “With three partnerships announced to date, Caris Discovery is taking a string of pearls-like approach to partnering, mixing and matching joint target discovery collaborations, target out-licensing and target validation, with creative deal structures that align with our partners’ needs and ultimately maximizes the potential for Caris-identified targets to reach the clinic and eradicate tumors.”
Learn more about Caris Discovery here.
About Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences® (Caris) is the leading molecular science and technology company actively developing and delivering innovative solutions to revolutionize healthcare and improve patient outcomes. Through comprehensive molecular profiling (Whole Exome and Whole Transcriptome Sequencing) and the application of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms, Caris has created the large-scale clinico-genomic database and cognitive computing needed to analyze and unravel the molecular complexity of disease. This information provides an unmatched resource and the ideal path forward to conduct the basic, fundamental research to accelerate discovery for detection, diagnosis, monitoring, therapy selection and drug development to improve the human condition.
With a primary focus on cancer, Caris’ suite of market-leading molecular profiling offerings assesses DNA, RNA and proteins to reveal a molecular blueprint that helps patients, physicians and researchers better detect, diagnose and treat patients. Caris’ latest advancement is a blood-based, circulating nucleic acids sequencing (cNAS) assay that combines comprehensive molecular analysis (Whole Exome and Whole Transcriptome Sequencing from blood) and serial monitoring – making it the most powerful liquid biopsy assay ever developed.
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris has offices in Phoenix, New York, Denver, Tokyo, Japan and Basel, Switzerland. Caris provides services throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and other international markets. To learn more, please visit CarisLifeSciences.com or follow us on LinkedIn.