Singapore single cell precision medicine company Proteona has been selected as one of the ten winners of Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year 2020 under the category of Science Start-ups. Proteona takes a powerful research tool, single cell multi-omics, into the clinics to improve precision medicine.

Proteona under its cancer treatment approaches collects tens of millions of data points per patient sample on important features including mutations, mRNA expression, and protein expression. Proteona then uses artificial intelligence to integrate the data and devise a plan for how to kill as many cancer cells as possible.

 “One key application of our technology is in the field of blood cancers. We have seen first-hand the battles patients have gone through and these patients have touched us profoundly. Treatment selection is a major challenge especially for relapsed cases. By analysing the molecular features and drug response profile of individual cells, Proteona can suggest treatment plans that best target the unique tumor make up of individual patients” says Dr Andreas Schmidt, the CEO of Proteona. 

Proteona has earlier this year been selected as a “One to Watch” in the Spinoff Prize by Nature Research in Partnership with Merck.

An interview with Proteona was broadcasted on 6 Nov 2020 by Falling Walls, followed by an interactive Q&A session with participants worldwide.

Proteona’s video presentation is available on the Falling Walls Remove 2020 website, which explains why Proteona embarked on the mission of breaking the wall of cancer, and how they are going to do that. It talks about

-         The current challenges in targeted cancer therapy and precision medicine

-         Why tumor heterogeneity or diversity makes cancer so difficult to treat

-         How we tackle the problem by combining single cell multi-omics and artificial intelligence-assisted analysis

-         What we are doing to help multiple myeloma and other cancer patients.

-         Our plan to break the wall of cancer, one cell at a time

The Falling Walls Conference is one of the most important world science summits and highlights the latest scientific and social breakthroughs. It first took place on November 9th, 2009, 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since then, it features the top innovations in all fields of science around the world, showcasing how innovation can make a positive impact. The Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the year celebrates outstanding science with the potential to change the world. This year, more than 900 nominations from 111 countries have been received for ten categories, which are: Life Sciences; Physical Sciences; Engineering and Technology; Social Sciences and the Humanities; Science in the Arts; Digital Education; Science and Innovation Management; Emerging Talents; Science Start-ups and Science Engagement.