Oncology Expert Keith T. Flaherty, MD Named Chairman of xCures Scientific Advisory Board

LOS ALTOS, Calif., June 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Today, xCures, Inc. announced that Keith T. Flaherty, MD, has joined the xCures Scientific Advisory Board as Chairman. The Scientific Advisory Board supports the work of xCures’ Virtual Tumor Boards in running patient-centered “Perpetual Trials” for oncology. xCures currently runs XCELSIOR, a Perpetual Trial integrating real-world data and patient-reported outcomes with an AI-enhanced Virtual Tumor Board. By implementing this precision oncology approach to the treatment of all cancer patients, on all therapies, all the time, xCures aims to develop deep insight into rapid improvements in the treatment of cancer patients.

“Keith Flaherty brings unparalleled experience in targeted therapy and will be an invaluable addition to the essential activities of our Scientific Advisory Board as more and more we bring real world evidence and patient-centered approaches to research to bear for patients in their fights against cancer,” said Mika Newton, CEO of xCures.

The xCures Scientific Advisory Board’s efforts include developing a portfolio of leading drugs for each of the major molecular mechanisms/pathways driving cancer and providing these options as input for xCure’s Virtual Tumor Boards to consider when formulating treatment options for cancer patients and their doctors. In conjunction with the Advisory Board, xCures works to establish relationships with the manufacturers of those drugs to make them part of the company’s compassionate access compendium. This makes these options more readily available to patients and their physicians. The Scientific Advisory Board will also consider outside entities submitting their hypotheses or therapies as treatment options for considerations by the Virtual Tumor Boards.

“Defeating cancer demands new approaches that both capture and disseminate treatment information broadly and efficiently,” said Dr. Flaherty. “These approaches must take into account the fact that there are far too many rational treatments to try and that traditional trials are far too expensive. I am thrilled to work with xCures as they further develop a revolutionary platform that can rapidly evaluate new therapeutic options at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional trials.”

Keith Flaherty, MD, is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, where he was named as the Richard Saltonstall Endowed Chair in Oncology.

A pioneer in developing targeted therapies matched to the genetic characteristics of a patient’s tumor, Dr. Flaherty led early clinical trials on the development of BRAF inhibitors in combination with MEK inhibition. He served as principal investigator for the first-in-human clinical trials and phase III trial of the first prospectively developed selective BRAF inhibitors with one subsequently approved by the FDA and commercialized as Zelboraf. Dr. Flaherty was also on the board of Loxo Oncology which was sold to Lilly after gaining a novel tumor agnostic approval based on a study of only 55 patients.

About xCures, Inc.
xCures (xCures.com) has developed an AI-enhanced methodology to operate Virtual Tumor Boards for cancer patients with an always-on platform to run ‘Perpetual Trials’, which gather real-world data on patients and implements a continuously learning system to ensure that data from the clinical experiences of all patients, on all treatments, all the time is being incorporated into individualized treatment recommendations. Each patient’s treatment regimen is adaptively planned by a Virtual Tumor Board to optimize their individual outcome, and these plans are coordinated across the whole patient population to maximize collective learning.

Contact:
Don Hannaford
(M) 703-981-7212
(E) dhannaford@decacommunications.com

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SOURCE xCures