Personalizing Medicine: Leap AI's Approach to Treatment Optimization

In sickness as in health, human physiology is determined by two factors, our genetic makeup and our environment. Even without environmental factors, it is clear that not every person gets the same diseases. It is also true that not every person responds to treatments the same way. And that is based on our genetic differences.

In the near future, we will have individual treatments tailored to our specific genotype. Leap AI is taking the first steps towards the future of truly personalized treatments and creating ways to optimize the existing treatments for each individual.

The biggest limiting factor in drug treatment today is the incomplete understanding of the underlying mechanism behind the disease. There is overwhelming evidence of the impact of genetics on our risk of developing a disease, the effect of the disease on our physiology, and to the treatment response. The more complex the disease mechanism, the bigger the potential for effects of genetic variations.

The current approach in medicine is to look for commonalities among large populations. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are trying to find simple combinations of genetic factors that would correlate to a disease risk, progression and treatment response. Following the increasing complexity of the disease landscape, these studies face new challenges. With ever growing numbers of loci of interest for complex diseases, much larger cohorts are needed to study complex genomic patterns. Current studies are only able to handle a small number of variants, which are often predetermined and common. An important fact is that genetic variations do not exist in a vacuum**:** One variation can influence the other's impact and without looking at the mechanics of the gene products, the generated information is still incomplete.

Leap AI  offers an analysis that is based on the patient’s personal sequence as a whole, including all previously known as well as unknown variants and their combinations. The Leap AI  solution provides a first-principles-based analysis on the molecular mechanisms between a patient’s genetic makeup and treatment options. This novel approach is accomplished by leveraging whole genome sequencing and the advances in AI that enable us to perform these analyses in-silico, creating a novel approach in personalized medicine.

Click here to listen to Mikko's insightful discussion about our unique approach on Leap AI's YouTube channel.

As we grow our understanding of the complexity of human physiology and disease mechanisms, medicine is facing a paradigm shift. “One-size-fits-all” treatments are giving way to personalized, optimized treatments. The advances in AI and in-silico medicine are alternatives to complex and expensive studies with a promise of faster, more effective treatments and research. Leap AI is paving the way to eventually take the guesswork related to genetics out of the equation in treatment planning.