Micronoma, Inc.
Micronoma, Inc.
Micronoma Inc., or Mircronoma™️, is an early-stage cancer detection company that uses a minimally invasive liquid biopsy to analyze signals from circulating microbiome signatures, some of the most ancient matter in the world. Liquid biopsy is an important new method for cancer diagnosis, and using the cancer microbiome may be a useful innovation to solve the challenge of early detection.
Micronoma's research, published in Nature[1] in 2020 found unique microbial signatures in tissue and blood for most major types of cancer. This microbiome-driven liquid biopsy method can detect cancer in its earliest stages, meaning including stage I, unlike other tests that only focus on the human genome, epigenome, or cancer mutations, as their sensitivity is partially linked to the size of the tumor to be detected.
The microbiome is the community of all microbes that live on and inside the human body. The composition of the microbiome changes with many factors and, if analyzed properly, the microbiome can reveal the status of human health.
Micronoma’s expertise and patent pending platform, Oncobiota, enable the identification of microbial nucleic acid biomarkers detected in blood samples for a good deal of cancer detection.
Origin
Micronoma was founded in 2019 by leaders in microbiome research, including Rob Knight, with the goal of using microbial techniques to revolutionize and advance the practice of early cancer diagnosis and personalized treatment.
Rather than the liquid biopsy technology currently used in cancer diagnosis, Micronoma focuses on detecting the circulating microbial nucleic acid signatures present from the tumor and the body’s response to the developing tumor. These signals are not dependent on tumor size, enabling its proprietary Oncobiota platform to detect cancer at the earliest stage of development.
In contrast, current liquid biopsy technology uses samples of blood to look for a methylation or fragmentation profile and/or within circulating tumor cells (CTC) and/or DNA shed from the tumor. However, to detect these signals, patients must have a large enough tumor mass to measure, which prevents the reliable possibility of accurate cancer detection in its earliest stages[2].
There are more than 18 million annual cases of cancer[3] worldwide each year with 9 million related deaths. Despite significant progress in cancer treatment, early-stage detection and relapse of disease remain unsolved challenges, resulting in up to 4 million preventable deaths[4].
Activities
Oncobiota
Micronoma calls its microbiome-driven liquid biopsy method for cancer detection in its earliest stages the Oncobiot platform. It reveals the cancer-related microbiome with unparalleled specificity and sensitivity[5]. Oncobiot is patent pending. It currently uses only microbial nucleic acids in blood with the capability of being applied to many cancer types.
While discovered as a method for multiple cancer early detection, Micronoma is developing its method in a modular way, one cancer at a time. Micronoma is focusing first on lung cancer diagnosis because it is a leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths. In addition, the current standard of care for lung cancer detection LDCT (low dose CT scan) is plagued with a very high rate of false positives (95%+)[6], leading to unnecessary lung tissue biopsies.
Micronoma’s technology will next focus on detection of pancreatic, liver, prostate, breast, and colorectal cancers, with future indications for kidney, bladder, and other cancers where early-stage detection capability is poor or non-existent.
Lung Cancer Assay
Micronoma’s analysis suite uses shotgun NGS (next-generation sequencing) technology to sequence plasma microbial nucleic acids analyzed with the OncobiotaTM Bioinformatics Platform to predict the presence of early stage lung cancers with greater sensitivity (i.e. far earlier) than traditional ctDNA (circulating tumor cells or DNA or methylation-based techniques). The method is minimally invasive, starting with as little as 400 ul of plasma. This method will enable clinicians to determine if a nodule observed by low dose CT Scan is benign or malign so that they can choose the most appropriate treatment option for their patients.
Micronoma Team
Founders
Sandrine Miller-Montgomery
Sandrine Miller-Montgomery Pharm.D, Ph.D. is the co-founder, president and CEO of Micronoma. Prior to this, she was executive director of UC San Diego’s Center for Microbiome Innovation (CMI) that she co-led with microbiome researcher, Dr. Rob Knight.
Greg Poore
Co-founder and Chief Analytic Officer (CAO) of Micronoma, and the co-inventor of Oncobiota, its method to diagnose cancer using microbial nucleic acids. Micronoma represents his third corporation at age 25. Academically, Greg is a fully-funded double doctorate candidate in UC San Diego’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP, 2016-Present). He has co-authored peer-reviewed accepted papers in journals, including Nature[7], Cell[8], and Nature Genetics[9], has an issued patent with several others under review, and was awarded NIH fellowship funding for his research on the cancer microbiome (F30, 2019-Present).
Rob Knight
Rob Knight is the co-founder of Micronoma and co-inventor of Oncobiota, the founding Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and Professor of Pediatrics and Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Microbiology. He received the 2017 Massry Prize, often considered a predictor of the Nobel Prize. He is the author of “Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes” (Simon & Schuster, 2015), coauthor of “Dirt is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System" (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) and spoke at TED in 2014. His lab has produced many of the software tools and laboratory techniques that enabled high-throughput microbiome science, including the QIIME pipeline (cited more than 17,000 times as of this writing) and UniFrac (cited more than 7,000 times, including its web interface). He is co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project and the American Gut Project.
Scientific Advisory Board
Martin J. Blaser
Martin J. Blaser, M.D., Chairman, Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, and holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers University.
Leena Das-Young
Leena Das-Young, Pharm. D. C-suite executive for biopharma in oncology, infectious disease, liquid biopsy, and product development in complex disease and precision medicine settings, including executive roles at both Pfizer and Guardant Health.
Ravid Straussman
Ravid Straussman, M.D, Ph.D. Principal Investigator at the Weizmann Institute, where his research is focused on understanding the roles of the tumor microenvironment and the tumor microbiome on resistance to cytotoxic, targeted, and immune-mediated anti-cancer therapies.
Jennifer Wargo
Jennifer Wargo, M.D., M.M.Sc., Professor, Surgical Oncology & Genomic Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Dr. Wargo has led and published research on the microbiome and the role it plays in patient response to cancer therapy.
Chairman of the Board
Dr. Magda Marquet, the Chairman of the Board of Micronoma, has more than three decades of experience in the biotech industry and is also the current chairman of the board of Matrysis, a clinical stage company developing novel therapies based on the skin microbiome. She previously was the co-founder of Ajinomoto Althea & AltheaDx and the former chairman of the board of directors of UCSD Moores Cancer Center, where she now sits on the executive committee. Dr. Marquet has been an independent board member for Micronoma since 2019.
References
- ↑ Ajami, Nadim J.; Wargo, Jennifer A. (March 2020). "AI finds microbial signatures in tumours and blood across cancer types". Nature. 579 (7800): 502–503. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00637-w.
- ↑ "Oncobiota". Micronoma. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
- ↑ Sung, Hyuna; Ferlay, Jacques; Siegel, Rebecca L.; Laversanne, Mathieu; Soerjomataram, Isabelle; Jemal, Ahmedin; Bray, Freddie (2021). "Global Cancer Statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 Countries". CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 71 (3): 209–249. doi:10.3322/caac.21660. ISSN 1542-4863.
- ↑ "Could Liquid Biopsies Be The Holy Grail in Cancer Diagnostics?". ARK Invest. 2017-02-16. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
- ↑ Ajami, Nadim J.; Wargo, Jennifer A. (March 2020). "AI finds microbial signatures in tumours and blood across cancer types". Nature. 579 (7800): 502–503. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00637-w.
- ↑ "Reduced Lung-Cancer Mortality with Low-Dose Computed Tomographic Screening". New England Journal of Medicine. 365 (5): 395–409. 2011-08-04. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1102873. ISSN 0028-4793. PMC 4356534. PMID 21714641.
- ↑ Poore, Gregory D.; Kopylova, Evguenia; Zhu, Qiyun; Carpenter, Carolina; Fraraccio, Serena; Wandro, Stephen; Kosciolek, Tomasz; Janssen, Stefan; Metcalf, Jessica; Song, Se Jin; Kanbar, Jad (March 2020). "Microbiome analyses of blood and tissues suggest cancer diagnostic approach". Nature. 579 (7800): 567–574. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2095-1. ISSN 1476-4687.
- ↑ Sepich-Poore, Gregory D.; Carter, Hannah; Knight, Rob (2021-05-10). "Intratumoral bacteria generate a new class of therapeutically relevant tumor antigens in melanoma". Cancer Cell. 39 (5): 601–603. doi:10.1016/j.ccell.2021.04.008. ISSN 1535-6108. PMID 33974857 Check
|pmid=value (help). - ↑ Tan, Jing; Ong, Choon Kiat; Lim, Weng Khong; Ng, Cedric Chuan Young; Thike, Aye Aye; Ng, Ley Moy; Rajasegaran, Vikneswari; Myint, Swe Swe; Nagarajan, Sanjanaa; Thangaraju, Saranya; Dey, Sucharita (November 2015). "Genomic landscapes of breast fibroepithelial tumors". Nature Genetics. 47 (11): 1341–1345. doi:10.1038/ng.3409. ISSN 1546-1718.
This article "Micronoma, Inc." is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Micronoma, Inc.. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
