Mar 9, 2026
Andria Parks, Head of Commercial Operations at First Ascent Biomedical, highlights the value of using a biopsy to grow cancer cells in a lab to determine which drugs are most likely to be effective against a specific cancer. This functional medicine approach combines lab data, genomic data, and AI to produce a report that identifies which drugs might work and which are unlikely to be effective for that individual patient. This perspective is particularly effective for rare cancers, which often lack established treatment guidelines.
Andria explains, "First Ascent Biomedical is a functional precision medicine company. And what that means is we've put together three very unique and advanced technologies to produce something very specific, and I'll explain what that means. What we do is we take a fresh biopsy from a patient, and we will grow those cells in our lab in a medium very similar to the human body. We will test or validate more than 150 drugs and drug combinations on those cells to see what works on those cells and what kills them. We will combine that with a patient's genomic information using our advanced AI. And then a report is produced that stack ranks the drugs that work, but most importantly, the drugs that don't work for that patient's cancer. And when a physician sees that report, they know exactly what to start with before initiating treatment. So everything we do is outside the body."
"If you are testing 150 drugs and combinations on your unique cancer cells, you will be able to know what works and doesn't ahead of time. Usually, most patients who don't follow this approach go through a standard-of-care protocol. And what that means is these protocols or ways of treating patients are based on hundreds of thousands of patients that may look like you and me, but are not you and me. So it's based on evidence of many, many, many patients with a similar type of profile. But the uniqueness of getting a drug to work for your specific cancers is based on your unique cells. So that's what makes a big difference. You may see 20% - 40% that works, but without knowing if they were tested on your cancer cells, and that's what makes a big difference with what functional precision medicine in oncology delivers."
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