Precision Therapeutics’ Subsidiary, to Study Innovative Personalized Medicine Opportunities for Cancer Patients

PITTSBURGH, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Precision Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: AIPT) (“Precision” or “the Company”) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Helomics® Corporation (Helomics), which provides personalized medicine solutions and boutique CRO services for clients in the pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and biotechnology industries, and SpeciCare, an innovative Georgia-based company connecting cancer patients to new treatment options only available through storing the patient’s live tumor tissue, have signed an agreement for Helomics to provide CRO services and its D-CHIP artificial intelligence (AI) platform for a functional precision medicine study sponsored by SpeciCare. “SpeciCare is at the forefront of a renewed interest in functional precision medicine, which has been core to our personalized oncology approach for many years. We are excited to work with SpeciCare on their PIONEER initiative study, which will utilize Helomics’ core functional precision medicine technology of live tumor drug profiling assays (TruTumor™) and genomic profiling coupled with our AI-driven bioinformatics platform, D-CHIP,” commented Gerald J. Vardzel Jr., president of Helomics. “This collaboration further demonstrates the value of our CRO services and D-CHIP platform, both to generate revenue, and advance personalized medicine to improve patient treatment and outcomes.” Functional precision medicine goes beyond pure genomics to test live tumor tissue from the patient with a variety of approaches that interrogate how the tumor behaves, such as when challenged with potential therapies. Traditional genomics-only approaches often do not provide clinically actionable results outside of a handful of approved genomic biomarkers and associated drugs, limiting clinicians’ options for individualizing therapy.