Artera Files for IPO Following $90M Funding to Advance AI-Powered Prostate Cancer Screening Platform

According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in humans. Hyuna Sung et al. have pointed out that prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in 112 countries.

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among male patients. Clinical studies indicate that the risk of developing prostate cancer for a 50-year-old man is 40%. The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 34,000 people will die from this disease in 2023, with over 288,000 new cases of prostate cancer diagnosed in the same year. One in eight men diagnosed with prostate cancer requires more precise and personalized treatment regimens.

Like other cancers, prostate cancer requires personalized treatment plans based on the patient’s condition, symptoms, and physical constitution.

Artera’s ArteraAI Prostate Detection System leverages multimodal artificial intelligence (MMAI) to formulate personalized and precise treatment decisions for patients.

Artera is a precision medicine company headquartered in Los Altos, California, USA. Its mission is to develop AI-powered diagnostic systems to enable personalized cancer treatment, with a commitment to the belief that AI can enhance the confidence of clinicians and patients in making treatment decisions.

In the treatment of localized prostate cancer, radiation therapy is a commonly employed modality. Since the 1980s, clinical trials have demonstrated that incorporating androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) into radiation regimens can lead to sustained improvements in oncological outcomes. Nevertheless, the adverse effects associated with ADT are significant. These include loss of muscle mass, hot flashes, increased body fat, osteoporosis, and detrimental effects on cognitive and cardiovascular health, all of which can substantially impair patients’ quality of life. Furthermore, relevant studies indicate that many patients with prostate cancer do not require ADT as part of their treatment plan and can be adequately managed with radiation therapy alone.

On one hand, the combination with radiotherapy enhances therapeutic efficacy; on the other, it brings side effects that cannot be ignored. Faced with this double-edged nature of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), how can we maximize benefits while minimizing harms to achieve the optimal treatment regimen? In this context, identifying patients most likely to benefit from ADT has become virtually imperative. The ArteraAI Prostate Test offers a solution by helping clinicians determine whether patients with localized prostate cancer are suitable for ADT, thereby enabling personalized treatment plans tailored to each patient’s physiological condition and disease status.

The ArteraAI Prostate Test is the first and only AI-derived prognostic biomarker assay recommended as a risk stratification tool in the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) for prostate cancer, enabling personalized clinical care. With the ArteraAI Prostate Test, physicians can better assess a patient’s absolute risk of distant metastasis or prostate cancer-specific mortality, as well as determine whether adding androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is likely to provide benefit. This helps avoid overtreatment and spares most intermediate-risk patients from ADT-related side effects and financial burdens.

“This is indeed a milestone in the treatment of prostate cancer,” said Dr. Daniel Spratt, Professor and Chair of Radiation Oncology at Case Western Reserve University and the Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in Ohio. “With the first AI-created biomarker that predicts the benefits of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer, we are able to further advance our goal of developing personalized cancer treatments.”

During treatment, clinicians and patients are often uncertain whether the patient will benefit from therapy, which can lead to a lack of confidence in the treatment plan on both sides and subsequently result in poor patient adherence. The ArteraAI Prostate Test is the first assay of its kind to provide predictive and prognostic insights for patients with localized prostate cancer, enabling patients and clinicians to review the test results together to determine the optimal treatment strategy. Furthermore, predictive results are available within 2–3 days of receiving the patient sample.

The ArteraAI Prostate Detection System is developed based on Multimodal Artificial Intelligence (MMAI). The MMAI biomarker detection system is a unique algorithm developed by Artera that integrates patients’ clinical data with biopsy images to predict their response to various treatments and prognosis. It leverages diverse data sources, including digital pathology, genomics, and clinical data, to enhance predictive accuracy. Furthermore, Artera’s MMAI can be adapted to different cancer types and treatment regimens, providing personalized precision therapies for patients. The algorithm was developed using extensive data from thousands of patients and tens of thousands of pathological slide images, and has been clinically validated through multiple Phase 3 randomized trials.

Based on this, the ArteraAI Prostate Test can predict treatment outcomes and determine prognosis for prostate cancer patients. Rather than focusing on a single clinical attribute, it leverages extensive and diverse clinical data along with digital pathology images to analyze multiple signs in individual patients, thereby accomplishing analytical tasks that neither traditional techniques nor computers could handle alone. Furthermore, the insights derived from its analysis help researchers identify common characteristics among prostate cancer patients who benefit from short-term androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), providing a reference basis for subsequent treatment decisions.

In the United States, prostate cancer disproportionately affects African American men, who account for 16.3% of all prostate cancer patients. However, this group has historically been underrepresented in clinical trials—African American men comprised only 10.8% of participants in past U.S. prostate cancer trials. Diversity in data is crucial for the generalizability of therapies; yet, many clinical trials fail to adequately represent minority populations, potentially leading to suboptimal treatment outcomes for these groups. The ArteraAI Prostate Test was developed using clinical trial data that included approximately 20% African American men, and it has demonstrated similar predictive and clinical performance in both African American and non-African American patients.

Notably, the ArteraAI Prostate Test also addresses the issue of “limited tissue.” Generally, the amount of tissue available from biopsies is limited, highlighting the necessity of tissue preservation. The ArteraAI Prostate Test does not consume tissue; instead, it leverages patients’ existing pathology slides by digitizing them for analysis by AI models.

Currently, the ArteraAI Prostate Test has been validated in the RTOG 9408 randomized trial, the largest Phase III randomized trial to date, which involved nearly 20 years of follow-up for patients receiving radiation therapy alone or radiation therapy combined with short-term hormone therapy or androgen deprivation therapy (ADT).

On March 21, 2023, Artera secured $90 million in venture capital from a consortium of prominent technology and healthcare investors, including seven institutional investors such as Coatue, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Walden Catalyst Ventures, as well as eleven angel investors including Marc Benioff and Jim Breyer. This funding will accelerate the promotion of Artera’s prostate cancer detection system in the United States and internationally.

Artera’s unique MMAI system can be used to create biomarkers that have the potential to guide precision treatment decisions for patients with various types of cancer. The growing prevalence of digital pathology will ultimately support the global expansion of AI-based biomarker testing in the future, thereby enabling the widespread application of personalized therapy. This also presents new opportunities for the broad adoption of ArteraAI’s detection systems in other cancer indications. Moving forward, Artera plans to accelerate the further development of its AI detection systems to support personalized treatment for additional cancer types, providing more cancer patients with therapeutic regimens that maximize benefits and minimize risks.

References:

Sung et al. Global cancer statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA Cancer J Clin. 2021: 71: 209- 249.