ARTIDIS
Moving Diagnosis from the Central Lab to Patient Bedside

Despite the incredible advances in cancer treatment over the past few decades, metastasis still kills 90% of cancer patients. Ensuring patients receive the best possible treatment from the start is thus crucial for improving outcomes in cancer. Enter ARTIDIS, a company with the vision to shift the paradigm of cancer care to the patient’s bedside through a Nanomechanical Signature that provides precise diagnosis, guides treatment and predicts its response – within hours, not, as is currently the case, days.

Dr. Marija Plodinec, CEO, and her co-founders Dr. Marko Loparic, Dr. Philipp Oertle, and Tobias Appenzeller, have brought together biophysics and cancer research to create a cutting-edge nanotechnology platform for tissue analysis. The bedside device swiftly identifies malignant tissue, using ARTIDISNET to merge clinical data with the Nanomechanical Signature, offering personalized diagnostics and treatment plans. Drawing from a decade of research, the ARTIDIS Nanomechanical Signature predicts malignancy and treatment outcomes accurately while also identifying aggressive lesions early. Furthermore, tissue integrity is preserved for downstream pathological analyses.

Understanding nanomechanics is key in determining cancer cell phenotypes, intravasation capability, and the development of micro-metastases, often signifying immediate aggressiveness. For instance, nanomechanical properties play a pivotal role in the metastasis process, where cancer cells can travel to and grow in other organs.

When it comes to conventional cancer biomarkers, they often fall short in predicting treatment outcomes due to the complex and dynamic nature of the condition.

"Unlike conventional biomarkers, the Nanomechanical Signature provides insights into the stiffness of tumors and the permeability of cancer and surrounding tissue, offering critical information about the propensity of the cancer to metastasize" says Dr Marija Plodinec. Furthermore, this enables physicians to make informed decisions about treatment modalities at the patient bedside via ARTIDIS easy-to-use report integrating the Nanomechanical Signature with patient's clinical data.

This is a game-changer: it will provide patients with additional value without extra burden of cost or procedures and generate measurable patient-focused benefits such as reduced time-to-diagnosis, optimized and right-sized treatment choice and reduced side effects. Starting with optimal treatment is crucial for enhancing cancer patients' outcomes, as time is the greatest resource when battling cancer.

A spin-off from the Biozentrum and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University of Basel, ARTIDIS quickly gained recognition at the Texas Medical Centre Innovation Institute and established a strategic clinical alliance with the world-leading MD Anderson Cancer Centre. Within the scope of the alliance MD Anderson and ARTIDIS researchers collaboratively evaluate the combination of nano-scale physical properties of the tumors and corresponding clinical data to help identify biomarker signatures that inform optimal therapeutic approaches.

In October 2023 ARTIDIS launched ANGEL (NCT06085833), its groundbreaking 2,700-patient, multi-center study. The ANGEL study aims to validate the clinical utility of the Nanomechanical Signature by evaluating ARTIDIS’ ability to assess bedside biopsies and accurately identify breast cancer subtypes as well as predict clinical outcomes and treatment response, especially in the realm of neoadjuvant therapy. Building on the NANO study at the University Hospital Basel, which confirmed the clinical value of the Nanomechanical Signature in distinguishing benign and malignant breast lesions in 545 patients, the ANGEL study strategically complements ARTIDIS recently established alliance with MD Anderson to demonstrate novel treatment-optimization tools for patients with solid tumors in several distinct indications.