Altis Labs Raises $25M Series A for AI Oncology Trial Platform

Toronto-based healthtech innovator, Altis Labs, has successfully closed a $25 million USD ($35 million CAD) Series A funding round. This significant capital infusion was co-led by prominent biotech investment firms OrbiMed and Qiming Venture Partners USA, signaling strong confidence in Altis's AI-driven approach to revolutionizing oncology clinical trials.

The company's proprietary platform, centered on its flagship AI model known as IPRO, aims to provide pharmaceutical developers with a more granular and accelerated understanding of treatment efficacy. By analyzing radiology scans, IPRO generates predictive survival metrics, enabling earlier and more robust detection of therapeutic effects compared to traditional trial endpoints. This capability is crucial in the drug development lifecycle, where timely and accurate data informs critical decisions regarding trial progression and portfolio management.

Altis Labs plans to strategically deploy the new funding to broaden the application of its AI models across a wider spectrum of cancer types. Furthermore, the investment will support the expansion of its global biopharmaceutical partnerships and contribute to establishing AI-generated endpoints as a new industry benchmark in cancer research. The company has amassed what it describes as the industry's most extensive real-world imaging database, encompassing clinical information and outcomes from over 500,000 patient years, forming the bedrock of its AI development.

The potential impact of Altis's technology is underscored by recent analyses. In a lung cancer study, IPRO processed approximately 10,000 radiology scans, yielding prognostic outcome measures for each participant. A post-hoc evaluation involving Johnson & Johnson indicated that IPRO identified treatment effects significantly earlier than conventional methods. Specifically, the AI detected therapeutic benefits 11 months ahead of primary progression-free survival results and a remarkable 26 months before overall survival outcomes were finalized.

This advancement addresses a critical challenge in drug development: the risk of prematurely discontinuing promising therapies or advancing flawed treatments due to the limitations of traditional endpoint analysis. The ability of IPRO to offer more accurate and reproducible predictions could dramatically improve the efficiency and success rate of oncology trials. The market for AI in drug discovery and development is experiencing substantial growth, with projections indicating a compound annual growth rate that highlights the increasing adoption of advanced analytics in pharmaceutical R&D.

The strategic decision by Altis co-founder and CEO, Felix Baldauf-Lenschen, to establish the company in Toronto, citing the city's rich AI talent pool and strong healthcare infrastructure, has proven prescient. This Series A round, with the backing of seasoned investors like OrbiMed and Qiming Venture Partners USA, positions Altis Labs to further solidify its role in shaping the future of evidence generation for cancer therapies.