Viome Life Sciences announces discovery of signature for detecting early stage cancer and launch of its Grants Program

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Viome Life Sciences (VLS) announces the publication of a clinical study performed with leading researchers and clinicians for early detection of life-threatening cancer or its precursors, and the launch of its Grants Program to encourage collaborative research. This study is the first initiative of the Viome Systems Biology Discovery Platform, called ViOS™, that translates research collaboration and scientific discoveries into clinical tools that can improve and save lives.

The study, published in Nature Partner Journals (npj) Genomic Medicine, addresses an unmet medical need to detect early stage oral squamous cell carcinoma using a simple, non-invasive saliva sample. The diagnostic method, which improves significantly upon the standard of care, is the first salivary metatranscriptome-based oral cancer diagnostic, and received a breakthrough device designation from the FDA earlier this year. The lab technology used for the molecular test was originally developed at the prestigious Los Alamos National Laboratory. Viome believes that saliva is an excellent liquid biopsy for detecting many malignancies, and plans to launch a cancer detection test in Q1 2022 based on the results of an extended study.

Over the last five years, the company has built ViOS, an advanced proprietary Systems Biology Discovery Platform, to help further its mission of preventing and curing chronic diseases and slowing down aging. The ViOS platform integrates a layered architecture of bioinformatics and analytical components that enables a wide range of applications to be created. This newly published study marks the first significant results since the platform has been opened up to leading researchers from institutions around the world and is a great indicator of its success.

The purpose of the company's Grants Program is to translate research into commercial products with clinical utility: devising new therapies and developing more accurate diagnostics and companion diagnostics. A typical grant would include, at no cost, sample collection kits (blood, stool, saliva, urine, plasma, CSF, throat swabs, vaginal swabs, surfaces, etc.), tests with laboratory and bioinformatics analyses, advanced data science and machine learning analyses, access to a state-of-the-art digital research platform for electronic recruitment and consent, collection of clinical data, delivering kits, etc., and a federally-accredited IRB with authority to approve clinical research in the USA. VLS's program will help accelerate the collaborative research needed to ultimately end chronic diseases.

"Our ViOS discovery platform supports high-resolution detection of gene expression, as well as a range of AI/ML based methods to discover biomarkers, identify therapeutic targets, and develop clinical applications," said Guru Banavar, Chief Technology Officer of Viome and first author on this paper. "The oral cancer diagnostic is a first-of-a-kind proof of concept that showcases the power of the ViOS platform, and establishes a repeatable method for rapidly developing and validating novel diagnostics and therapeutics. We are happy to make this cutting edge platform available to the scientific community."

"Effective and easy to use clinical diagnostic tools will make a big difference in detecting oral cancer early and significantly reduce mortality," said Dr. Salomon Amar, Vice President of Research at New York Medical College and Senior VP of Research at Touro College and University Systems, and the clinical expert on this project. "The new molecular and analytical techniques that Viome brings to the table will help the entire scientific and clinical community to develop such tools faster and more efficiently."

"Oral cancer is a life threatening disease that is highly prevalent in some parts of the world, but without early diagnostics that can enable treatment and save lives," said Chamindie Punyadeera, Professor at Griffith University (formerly at Queensland University of Technology when this project was performed), who has been researching saliva-based clinical applications for many years now. "The Viome platform has enabled us to quickly extract a strong signal from this sample set.  This has been a very productive collaboration."

The ViOS Platform is robust and ready for large scale clinical studies, and VLS invites scientific collaborators to submit proposals to their grants program. (https://www.viomelifesciences.com/grants).

About Viome Life Sciences:
Viome Life Sciences was founded in 2016 with a mission to make illness a matter of choice by predicting and preventing chronic diseases through a deeper understanding of an individual's biology at a molecular level. Viome is the industry's only direct-to-consumer healthcare company that analyzes microbial and human gene expressions (RNA), with technology exclusively licensed from Los Alamos National Lab, to provide individuals with health insights and the nutrition they need.

Today, Viome Life Sciences has become a global healthcare company, developing precision nutrition, precision drugs, and precision vaccines to help people live a disease-free life. Viome has developed a state-of-the art metatranscriptomics and artificial intelligence platform called ViOS™ that analyzes the data from the world's largest and richest gene expression database to identify the root causes of chronic diseases and the mechanisms of action to be able to prevent and reverse these diseases.

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SOURCE Viome Life Sciences