Biostate AI, a startup specializing in artificial intelligence for RNA sequencing, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine to develop AI models for personalized assessments of patient disease prognosis and evolution, with an initial focus on leukemia.
The partnership will leverage Weill Cornell Leukemia Program's extensive biorepository of bone marrow and blood samples alongside Biostate AI's proprietary barcode-integrated reverse transcription (BIRT) technology for RNA sequencing (RNAseq) to analyze RNA expression from patient samples at scale.
"Current personalized medicine approaches look only at one or a few key biomarkers for each disease," said David Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Biostate AI and former Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University. "This results in poor predictive accuracy because every patient is different, and we are not looking at the whole picture of a patient's health or disease."
The collaboration aims to revolutionize patient treatment through precise AI-driven decisions on whether to prescribe treatments such as bone marrow transplants and BCL-2 inhibitors, potentially leading to improved patient outcomes.
Developing AI Models for Acute Myeloid Leukemia
The initial phase of the project will focus on acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive and biologically heterogeneous malignancy that presents both diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. The Biostate AI team will work with Dr. Gail J. Roboz, Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, to develop a prototype AML-specific AI model.
This pilot phase will utilize 1,000 retrospective bone marrow and blood samples to create and train a transformer-based AI model that uses RNA expression as its "language." Upon reaching predetermined technical performance milestones, the study will expand to include up to 50,000 retrospective samples, including multiple longitudinal samples from the same patient, to develop definitive models.
The AI model will be designed to perform three critical functions:
- AML subtype stratification
- Disease prognosis
- Therapy selection
"My team and I look forward to investigating the potential for Biostate AI's approach to help personalize treatment selection for AML patients," said Dr. Roboz.
Advancing Precision Medicine Through AI and RNA Sequencing
Biostate AI's approach represents a significant departure from traditional biomarker discovery methods. While standard-of-care tests like OncotypeDx have been successful for breast cancer, similar approaches have failed to generalize to other diseases or cancers.
"Disease prognosis represents an important new direction for Biostate AI, and unlocks applications never before possible with AI as a field," said Ashwin Gopinath, co-founder and CTO of Biostate AI and former Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. "By taking on a modern AI plus massive data approach, we believe that Biostate AI is developing a general-purpose technology possible for improving outcomes for patients suffering from all diseases."
Cornell University's Center for Technology Licensing (CTL) facilitated the agreement, aligning with Weill Cornell Medicine's commitment to translational research and innovation in precision medicine.
"This agreement reflects Cornell's commitment to fostering industry partnerships that translate academic research into real-world impact," said Dr. Lisa Placanica, Senior Managing Director of CTL at Weill Cornell, a part of Weill Cornell Medicine Enterprise Innovation.
Biostate AI's Growing Influence in AI-Driven Healthcare
Since its founding in 2023, Biostate AI has invented and patented over 12 technologies in RNAseq and AI and has partnered with more than 100 different research groups across the United States using its BIRT technology.
The company builds generative AI that predicts the evolution of human disease and drug response based on RNA sequencing data. Its patented wetlab technologies, including BIRT, allow affordable and scalable collection of massive amounts of transcriptomic and genomic data.
With sites in Houston, TX, Palo Alto, CA, Bangalore, India, and Shanghai, China, Biostate AI has established itself as an international company with collaborations spanning top hospitals, academic researchers, and biotech/biopharma companies.
The collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine represents a significant step forward in applying AI to personalized medicine, potentially transforming how leukemia and other diseases are diagnosed, prognosticated, and treated in the future.
