With sequencing technology, AI and high-powered computing converging, Caris President Dr. David Spetzler shares his thoughts on the ways Caris and its technology are transforming modern cancer care.
Having generated over 330 patent applications across 37 different patent families and co-authored more than 123 peer-reviewed journal articles, Dr. Spetzler oversees Caris’ Clinical Operations, Research and Development, Information Technology, Bioinformatics and Biopharma Services. Prior to his 15 years at Caris, he was a member of the research faculty at Arizona State University, where he developed multiplexed nanotechnologies for single molecule detection of nucleic acid and protein targets.
What inspired your professional pursuits and how does Caris Life Sciences align?
My journey into the field of molecular science is deeply personal, initially spurred by my child’s rare genetic condition and later by other family health challenges. These experiences instilled in me a passion for genetics, genomics and molecular biology which has been honed into a relentless drive for improving patient care and outcomes. Additionally, the idea of eliminating medical mysteries and demystifying the gene is a molecular scientist’s dream.
I joined Caris right after receiving my PhD from Arizona State as a bioinformatics scientist, and it didn’t take long for me to realize this was a very special organization. What I was most immediately impacted by was – and still is – Caris’ guiding principle called ‘The Mom Rule,’ which means “whatever you’d want done for your own mom is what we should be doing for every single patient.” It’s about ensuring that every action we take can stand up to the most personal scrutiny concerning patient care. This rule not only shapes our lab practices, ensuring they go above and beyond industry standards, but also fosters our culture of compassion and scientific excellence.
I’ve seen this come to life in every part of our business over my 15 years with Caris, consistently pushing past the limits of what’s expected, with a continual drive to go deeper into science and innovate further. I’m still actively researching and innovating as President, leading the company’s clinical testing service and the development of proprietary technologies and precision medicine strategies, paving the way for personalized care and improved patient outcomes.
How have technology and innovation transformed cancer care over your career?
I’ve seen innovation and technology drastically transform cancer care, moving from basic histological methods to sophisticated molecular profiling. Caris’ pioneering work in liquid biopsy and AI-driven platforms like DEAN, which enables our comprehensive molecular profiling and other industry-leading AI tools, has set new standards in precision medicine, allowing us to tailor therapeutic guidance based on detailed molecular insights. We’ve amassed immense amounts of data through our years of molecular profiling and experience the power of unleashing highly sophisticated AI bioinformatics and transformative machine learning capabilities on it to classify cancer at the molecular level and predict patient response in unprecedented ways.
Caris’ innovations also enable wider accessibility of molecular diagnostics with our advanced liquid biopsy assay, Caris Assure™, which can detect cancer with greater accuracy by analyzing blood samples for molecular changes. This approach enables Caris to identify a variety of cancer types at an early stage and tailor personalized treatment plans based on detailed molecular profiles. Studies of Caris Assure show that it produces superior results while providing a comprehensive look at all 23,000 genes on a DNA- and RNA-level. No other liquid biopsy test I know of is anywhere near that informative or precise. Technology and innovation have enabled Caris to build our market-leading portfolio of precision medicine tools which have already helped more than half a million cancer patients worldwide.
Tell us more about Caris Assure – how does Caris’ liquid biopsy technology differ from “first generation” cancer detection methods, and what advantages does it offer?
Liquid biopsy technology can provide valuable insights into tumor biology and detect a broad range of cancer types, while also improving diagnostic accuracy, monitoring disease progression and a patient’s response to treatment. Also importantly, it’s minimally invasive, easier on the patient and can provide rapid results.
Caris’ liquid biopsy assay, Caris Assure, is a new class of diagnostic test – setting a new standard for liquid biopsy profiling with a single assay that can cover the full cancer care journey and represents the first broad integration of AI in oncology diagnostics. It takes advantage of the most advanced sequencing and computing technology to capture all of the genetic information available from the whole exome (WES) and whole transcriptome (WTS) sequencing, both from the tumor material circulating in the blood and from a patient’s white blood cells. The machine learning algorithm that powers Caris Assure, the Assure Blood-based Cancer Detection AI (ABCDai), was trained using RNA-based WTS and DNA-based WES data from more than 350,000 tumor specimens to identify molecular patterns indicative of cancer in the blood. This is one of the richest and largest sets of patient data in the world and it’s growing daily.
Caris Assure can provide oncologists with broad decision-making tools at all steps in a cancer patient’s journey, from multi-cancer early detection and treatment selection, to monitoring for residual disease and cancer recurrence. Comparatively, all other commercially available tests rely on analysis of sampling from only a single point of time in the cancer journey.
I’m certain that the technology we are developing today is going to revolutionize precision medicine and individualized care, all of which will tremendously improve patient outcomes and have a significant impact on our most vulnerable communities.”
How does collaboration play a part in advancing cancer care?
Caris actively collaborates with various institutions and organizations to advance cancer research, enhance precision medicine, drive new therapeutics and improve patient outcomes. Leveraging real-world evidence from the over 698,000 lifetime clinical cases including over 550,000 with matched molecular data and outcomes found in our unique AI-driven platform, we partner with other healthtech and biopharma companies to support and accelerate biopharmaceutical drug development, optimize clinical trials and patient enrollment, and enhance patient care.
We also founded a leading cancer research enterprise, the Caris Precision Oncology Alliance™, to bring together a network of leading cancer institutions and research consortia to collaborate on biomarker-driven research. These institutions have early access to Caris’ extensive database and artificial intelligence platform to establish evidence-based standards for cancer profiling and molecular testing in oncology.
One of the biggest ways Caris can help improve cancer patient outcomes is by leveraging our extensive data – through our own offerings, as well as through strategic partnerships – to improve therapies and care for patients.
What excites you about the future at Caris?
I’m really excited to see cancer detection technology and AI evolve not only at Caris but in the healthcare space as a whole. I’m certain that the technology we are developing today is going to revolutionize precision medicine and individualized care, all of which will tremendously improve patient outcomes and have a significant impact on our most vulnerable communities.
I’m also looking forward to evolving our technologies to extend to diseases beyond cancer. We have the data, molecular information and AI tools needed to apply our analytic power to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, or autoimmune diseases like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn’s disease, and many more. This is a very exciting time to be a part of molecular diagnostics, and I feel like we’re starting to get ahead of the devastating diseases that cause so much sorrow and harm.
Technology and scientific advances at Caris are already leading to the increase in patient survival. I truly believe that we’ll ultimately be able to create tailored individualized therapies that enable the elimination of diseased cells of all types.
Technology and innovation have enabled Caris to build our market-leading portfolio of precision medicine tools which have already helped more than half a million cancer patients worldwide.”
