Mayo Clinic has launched Precure, a new company formed with Thermo Fisher Scientific, which aims to better identify early biological signals of disease.
Precure will generate molecular data from 1 million biospecimens, linking genomic and proteomic information with longitudinal clinical data collected over several years, using artificial intelligence and large-scale data analytics to identify patterns within the resulting datasets.
“By harnessing the full potential of multiomics data, Precure aims to help us better understand disease before symptoms appear, accelerating discoveries that can lead to earlier diagnoses, more targeted treatments and better outcomes for patients” in conditions including cancer, cardiometabolic disease, neurological disorders, and immune-mediated disease, Mayo Clinic CEO Gianrico Farrugia said in a statement. Mayo Clinic will serve as majority owner of Precure, with Thermo Fisher joining as a minority owner. Mayo said it is contributing clinical and research leadership, AI and data science capabilities, biospecimens, and longitudinal de-identified clinical data, while Thermo Fisher is contributing proteomics technology, including its Olink Explore HT platform and Orbitrap mass spectrometry systems, along with related kits and reagents.
Precure is a complementary piece to Precure Research, Mayo Clinic’s existing investigator-led effort to study early disease biology, the organization said. Precure Research focuses on identifying and understanding early disease signals, while the new company is intended to provide the scale and infrastructure to generate population-scale molecular data and translate findings into new diagnostics and therapeutics.
Mayo said any financial returns it receives would be “reinvested” in patient care, research, and education. Other financial terms were not disclosed.