Ex-BioNTech execs launch 'AI-native' cancer company

Two senior executives formerly at mRNA specialist BioNTech have lifted the curtain on a new biotech called Bios Life that they call "an AI-native cancer surveillance company."

Ex-BioNTech chief strategy officer Ryan Richardson is chief executive of the new outfit, which launches with $25 million in seed financing led by Redmile, Vsquared Ventures and Kindred Capital. Meanwhile, Zach Taylor, formerly a senior vice president at BioNTech, is taking on the role of chief operating officer.

Bios Life intends to develop a virtual clinic that offers a personalised and continuous approach to cancer screening and care, including cancer survivors and high-risk individuals, in what it calls a "new category of cancer care."

According to Richardson, people who survive a cancer diagnosis or who are at high risk of developing the disease – around 40 million people in the US – often fall through the cracks of current healthcare systems and face fragmented and reactive care.

Bios Life – which has teams in place in the US and UK – aims to deliver personalised risk assessment, tailored screening, and survivorship care with the goal of "finding cancer sooner, intervening smarter, and improving lifelong outcomes at scale."

The company starts operations with the help of a strategic alliance with AI specialist Tempus, which was set up around a massive database of more than 7 million de-identified patient records – including imaging data, genomic information, transcriptomics profiles, and clinical text – that will be used to train, validate, and deploy predictive models across a wide range of common cancers.

"Tens of millions of high-risk individuals and cancer survivors lack access to cutting-edge care which is tailored to their particular needs and their unique biology," said Richardson.

"Bios Life is building a novel technology portfolio and specialised care delivery model to uniquely serve these individuals at a level that has not been possible until now – one that is deeply personalised and delivered at scale."

The company hopes to deliver its virtual clinic model in partnership with oncology centres around the US, giving it access to care teams, and is planning to launch the platform before the end of the year.

Commenting on the plan, the director of the Duke Cancer Institute Center for Onco-Primary Care, Kevin Oeffinger, said: "Cancer screening and surveillance have been at a relative standstill for the past 20-30 years [and] the vast majority of individuals at elevated risk of cancer are not screened according to standard-of-care guidelines."

Given that one out of every five newly diagnosed cancers in the US is found in cancer survivors, use of an AI-enhanced care model promises to "move us from stagnation to the long-promised potential of personalised and precise cancer screening."

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash