Data Science and Health: IMFD Innovation signs collaboration agreement with UC Environ Spin-Off

The early detection of metastasis in prostate cancer patients is the objective of ProstaMets, a prognostic test that analyzes the progression of this tumor through the detection of genetic markers. The technology -which has been awarded and highlighted in the R&D ecosystem- is a development of Environ, a biotech startup born under the wing of the Pontificia Universidad Católica.

The company has just signed a collaboration agreement with the Innovation Unit of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), which seeks to apply the data science and artificial intelligence expertise of this unit. The test detects the presence of genes present in the tumor's microenvironment and that data is taken by an algorithm to analyze and measure the progression of metastasis.

"We hope to contribute to the automation of this process, through the application of explainability techniques that allow us to visualize the process from the moment the algorithm receives the data until it produces a forecast," says Jazmine Maldonado, CEO of IMFD Innovation. In this way, not only is the automated analysis system guaranteed, but it is also possible tostudy the incidence of each gene in each prognosis and nurture the research that Environ carries out.