ARTICLE SUMMARY:
AI-driven computational technologies are revolutionizing precision medicine but their use in the clinic is still in the early stages. The French/European start-up TheraPanacea is applying machine learning and AI to analyze medical images/multimodal clinical data with the goals of improving treatment strategies in cancer, neurology, and other disease states, speeding and expanding access to treatments, and standardizing physician evaluation of images.
Nikos Paragios, PhD, a distinguished professor of mathematics, is a leading scientist in the interrelated fields of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and computer vision.
By 2015, after nearly 30 years at theÉcole CentraleSupélec, the school of engineering of the University of Paris-Saclay where he directs a 35-person laboratory, Paragios’ work at the university and that of his students had resulted in five patents, owned by the university.
Now eager to apply his research to practical ends, Paragios began to explore its potential impact on healthcare. Thanks to the support from the University of Paris-Saclay technology transfer office, three priorities were identified: diagnosis, precision radiotherapy/robotic surgery, and precision medicine, notably identification of patients most likely to respond to treatment prior to initiation.
This ambition laid the groundwork for the founding in 2017 of TheraPanacea by Paragios and two colleagues: Rafael Marini Silva, his former student, and Catherine Martineau-Huynh, who previously was deputy dean of international affairs at the university and is currently the start-up’s chief operating officer. While academics have been exploring computational methods for decades, by the early to mid-2000s, advances in computing power, the ability to harness information automatically from different sources, and a revolution in deep learning methods for accessing medical data were fomenting a revolution in healthcare information technologies that made the formation of his company possible, Paragios says. And while others also raced to benefit from the whirl of innovations, TheraPanacea had exclusive licenses to the university patents covering work from a laboratory with high international standing, and a top-flight founding team with a substantive scientific track record and body of research.
