Our science

Live cancer cells meet artificial intelligence

By combining truly personalized science with artificial intelligence, we can predict how effective different treatment options would be in battling your dog's cancer.

A female pet parent looking at her Corgi dog

What is precision medicine?

A canine cancer patient receiving personalized treatment with ImpriMed

Every patient is unique, so two patients with the same medical condition may respond differently to the available treatment options. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for improving the success rate of medical interventions by identifying the treatment options most likely to be effective for individual patients.

What is functional precision medicine?
In addition to conventional precision medicine approaches based on biomarkers and patient information, ImpriMed uses an innovative and powerful approach called “functional precision medicine.” Our approach is “functional” because we directly test how effectively anticancer drugs disrupt the normal functioning of a patient's live cancer cells.

OUR APPROACH

How the ImpriMed approach is different

Innovative Approach to Cancer Care

ImpriMed’s approach to precision oncology is unique in several ways.

  1. We use the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence algorithms to predict how well different treatment options will work for your pet.
  2. We base our predictions on thousands of real-world clinical outcomes that ImpriMed has collected from canine lymphoma and leukemia patients.
  3. We use multiple different tests to analyze your pet’s cancer and to predict its vulnerabilities; we seek out and invent the best tumor profiling technologies from genetic and cellular profiling methods to our innovative robotic platform that tests a panel of drugs on small samples of your pet’s live tumor cells.

The result is a unique precision medicine product that enables you and your veterinarian to quickly find the best drugs for treating your pet's cancer.

Dr. Ilona Holcomb working in a lab
A diagram that shows ImpriMed's service workflow
ImpriMed’s transport medium and logistics

How can we get live cancer cells to the lab for testing? This is a real challenge for most companies. The logistics associated with keeping cells alive long enough to be tested are difficult to overcome.

ImpriMed innovated past these challenges by developing a proprietary transport medium that keeps cells healthy during shipping and a web portal to make ordering, processing, and receiving samples easy and fast.

Illustration of a mailer box filled with ImpriMed's proprietary transport media tubes

When we receive live cancer cell samples, we conduct the following tests at our lab in California:

Drug sensitivity shows us how effective a drug can be for each patient. Our drug panel currently includes 13 anticancer drugs that are commonly used for treating canine lymphoma and leukemia.

Flow cytometry quantifies the levels of 10 different proteins found on and within tumor cells. This test provides prognostic and diagnostic information for leukemia and lymphoma.

PARR (PCR for Antigen Receptor Rearrangement) tells us the genetic lineage of the malignancy. This test lets us give veterinary oncologists detailed information about the expansion of B-cell and T-cell clones.

Artificial intelligence

How we collect clinical evidence and use proprietary artificial intelligence models

ImpriMed uses various data points to generate predictions

To determine which drugs elicit a positive clinical response, we conducted an initial study to collect real-world data. We used the data from this clinical study to train AI models so they can predict the ways in which individual patients will respond to a panel of commonly used anticancer drugs. After the initial clinical study, we partner with our amazing network of customers to continuously grow our database of clinical outcomes. These data are added to our existing database and used to further refine the AI models.

Our outcomes database now includes more than 2,500 canine patients and is growing by the month. Due to ImpriMed’s continuous learning process, our AI models are constantly increasing in accuracy with more time and more customers.

Validations

Read our peer-reviewed scientific papers

Based on our established technology and workflow, we performed clinical studies to evaluate correlation between our predictive value and the actual clinical response to various anticancer drugs.

Human Oncology

Published in Blood Research, Nov 2024

Recent advances in and applications of ex vivo drug sensitivity analysis for blood cancers

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First page of Prognostic value of European Leukemia Net 2022 criteria and genomic clusters using machine learning in older adults with acute myeloid leukemia, published Sept 2023

Published in Haematologica, Sept 2023

Prognostic value of European Leukemia Net 2022 criteria and genomic clusters using machine learning in older adults with acute myeloid leukemia

Read the Full Article
ImpriMed's article on "ML-based sequential analysis to assist selection between VMP and RD for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma" was published in npj precision oncology

Published in npj Precision Oncology, May 2023

ML-based sequential analysis to assist selection between VMP and RD for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

Read the Full Article

Veterinary Oncology

Published in Veterinary Sciences, July 2024

Prognostic Utility of the Flow Cytometry and Clonality Analysis Results for Feline Lymphomas

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First page of Multimodal machine learning models identify chemotherapy drugs with prospective clinical efficacy in dogs with relapsed B-cell lymphoma published by Frontiers in Oncology in Feb 2024

Published in Frontiers in Oncology, Feb 2024

Multimodal machine learning models identify chemotherapy drugs with prospective clinical efficacy in dogs with relapsed B-cell lymphoma

Read the Full Article
First page of Predicting Dynamic Clinical Outcomes of the Chemotherapy for Canine Lymphoma Patients Using a Machine Learning Model published by Veterinary Sciences in Dec 2021

Published in Veterinary Sciences, Dec 2021

Predicting Dynamic Clinical Outcomes of the Chemotherapy for Canine Lymphoma Patients Using a Machine Learning Model

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First page of Predicting likelihood of in vivo chemotherapy response in canine lymphoma using ex vivo drug sensitivity and immunophenotyping data in a machine learning model by Veterinary Comparative Oncology in Oct 2020.

Published in Veterinary and Comparative Oncology, Oct 2020

Predicting likelihood of in vivo chemotherapy response in canine lymphoma using ex vivo drug sensitivity and immunophenotyping data in a machine learning model

Read the Full Article
Presentations
Presentations
Veterinary Cancer Society Logo

Predicting likelihood of in vivo chemotherapy response in canine lymphoma using ex vivo drug sensitivity and immunophenotyping data in a machine learning model

Veterinary Cancer Society Annual Conference 2020
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Presentations
Veterinary Cancer Society logo

ImpriMed: A data-driven, personalized chemotherapy drug testing service for canine blood cancer patients

Veterinary Cancer Society Annual Conference 2021
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Presentations
World Veterinary Cancer Congress logo

Individualizing chemotherapy for canine lymphoma based on ex vivo drug sensitivity test

World Veterinary Cancer Congress 2020
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Presentations
Precision Medicine World Conference logo

From dog to human: precision medicine for comparative oncology

Precision Medicine World Conference 2020
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Presentations
NYC Oncology Conference 2019

ImpriMed: precision medicine for pet cancer care

NYC Oncology Conference 2019
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Presentations
Veterinary Cancer Society Logo

Individualizing chemotherapy for canine lymphoma based on ex vivo drug sensitivity test

Veterinary Cancer Society Annual Conference 2019
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