Triomics co-founders Sarim Khan and Hrituraj Singh
Cancer specialists in the US potentially have access to hundreds of innovative trials and new treatments that could make all the difference to their patients. But identifying which trial is best suited to a specific patient is time-consuming; doing that work for multiple patients even more so. Enter the San Francisco-based start-up Triomics, which claims its artificial intelligence (AI) platform is the answer.
“We think our technology can help thousands of patients,” says Sarim Khan, the co-founder and CEO of Triomics, which is today announcing it has raised $15 million of new funding. “The workloads involved in reviewing patients’ charts can lead to clinical delays, including patients missing out on clinical trials or biomarker-driven treatments.”
Around 20% of patient data is current held in easily accessible formats that existing technologies can deal with, Triomics says. But the remaining 80% is unstructured data such as doctors’ notes that currently needs to be manually searched. For each patient, oncologists have to comb through the entire record to identify the key data points – and therefore to be able to match them to trials and emerging treatments.
Triomics’ platform, using specially developed large language models (LLMs), aims to replace that manual process, freeing up oncologists’ time and securing better outcomes for more patients at greater speed. Triomics says its AI-driven solution can match patients to trials with 95% accuracy – comparable to the results of manual processing – but get through cases in a matter of minutes. “It’s all about maximising the patient’s opportunity to get the best care,” Khan adds.
Triomics’ technology also has other applications, the company points out. It also markets the platform as a vehicle through which healthcare providers can automate a range of manual processes required for different use cases, from quality assurance to the tracking of clinical pathways.
However, it is the company’s focus on improving patient access to trials and treatments that is likely to garner most attention. “The ability to quickly and accurately convert complex cancer data into a format that can be used to improve patient care is crucial,” says Anai Kothari, a surgical oncologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center, one early adopter of Triomics’ platform.
Hrituraj Singh, CTO and co-founder of the company, says Triomics' success since its launch in 2020 reflects its efforts to bring in two different types of talent. “Our investments in our core areas of focus have been deliberate,” Singh says. “We have successfully merged expertise in two complex functional areas: our AI researchers, who are specialists in customising language models to specific domains, and our clinical staff, who have decades of oncology-specific experience.”
That has seen the company build out its platform with a number of hospital and healthcare partners. It has now moved into the commercialisation stage, signing up a several early customers and aiming to reach as many as 15 institutions by the end of the year.
Clearly, the company’s intellectual property sits at the heart of its efforts to break through – hence the fund raising, which is largely aimed at helping Triomics to continue recruiting. The business currently employs around 50 specialists but expects that to rise to 60 or so in the short to medium term.
The company’s investors are excited by its potential, with today’s raise including participants such as Lightspeed, Nexus Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Y Combinator.
“Triomics is leveraging existing healthcare datasets and generative AI to empower hospital staff to automate clinical trials and streamline cancer centre workflows,” says Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed.
Jishnu Bhattacharjee, managing director at Nexus Venture Partners, adds: “With robust early results for its proprietary oncology specific LLMs and partnerships with leading cancer care and research centers, Triomics is well poised to deliver significant value to cancer care providers and patients in the US and globally.”
