Headquarters
Montréal, Quebec

President and CEO
Kostas Trakas

Chief Medical Officer
Gerald Batist

Board chair
Maha Katabi

Canada as a world-class centre for cutting-edge cancer clinical trials

The opportunity

In this new era of personalized medicine, smaller patient populations are recruited to clinical trials based on very distinct genetic or molecular biomarker indicators. Identifying the right patients for trials of new targeted agents is time-consuming and costly. There are currently no pan-Canadian cancer registries containing patient clinical data with associated tumour molecular data. Having a large clinical and molecular database of patients and their banked tumours will allow rapid identification of patient-treatment matches, resulting in faster access for patients to new treatments, an accelerated clinical development process and reduced clinical trial costs.

How Exactis is seizing the opportunity

Exactis Innovation (Exactis) is a pan-Canadian, non-profit network that provides accelerated access to clinical trials for precision cancer therapies in areas of high unmet need to patients who have their cancer molecularly profiled. Exactis’ vision is to integrate precision oncology across Canada and enable greater access to leading edge clinical trials for Canadian cancer patients. Exactis’ attracts innovative clinical trials and match Canadian patients in its network to personalized oncology treatments using state of the art molecular screening platforms. The continuum of expertise and systems that have been brought together across the Exactis network represents a critical and valuable capability for Canadian cancer patients, clinician scientists and the interaction between academia and the bio-pharmaceutical sector to accelerate precision oncology in Canada.

Among the results

• Since its inception in 2014, Exactis has launched the Personalize My Treatment (PMT) registry, which collects cancer patient’s clinical and molecular information and has expanded its pan-Canadian research network to a total of 16 sites in 2021. Following several profiling initiatives, a total of 205 molecular results have been performed and returned to clinicians across Exactis’ network. PMT is a unique registry that follows patients over their disease trajectory, allowing the monitoring of disease evolution and outcomes. To date, the PMT registry has enrolled over 6,500 patients, which includes 8 cancer types, with a capacity to enroll up to 2,500 participants per year.
• In 2020, Exactis implemented and completed two Real World Evidence projects in lung and breast cancer respectively, which leveraged the PMT registry and the on-site PMT coordinators to assist in the capture of clinical data.
• Exactis provided pre-genomic screening, site identification and startup for a clinical trial sponsored by Sermonix Pharmaceuticals in ESR-1 positive breast cancer in 2020, across seven sites, including five sites within the network, which will be completed in 2021.
• Exactis supported and managed a phase I pilot study investigating rhDNASe I in COVID-19 patients conducted at two Canadian sites. Fifteen patients were enrolled and analysis is ongoing.
• Exactis is continuing to support and manage the TRAM-01 study, a biomarker molecular/targeted phase 2 study with Trametinib monotherapy for pediatric patients with low grade glioma or plexiform neurofibroma, open at seven academic centers in Canada that leverage the specific expertise in drug-targeted trials.
• Three innovative Investigator Initiated Trials (IIT) are being initiated that address significant questions in precision oncology. Exactis-01 will evaluate the utility of returning genomic results using blood, and the study has the potential to influence clinical decisions and have an impact on patient survival. Exactis-02 is an observational study with the aim of identifying immune response signatures and to correlate them to disease progression. Finally, Exactis-03 is a phase I study in ovarian and triple negative breast cancer that will assess the safety of an experimental therapeutic combination, with the goal of improving survival in significantly hard-to-treat sub-populations.
• Three multi-centre serial biopsy trials in colorectal and lung cancer that were developed and managed by Exactis successfully published scientific results in novel genomic predictive biomarkers in 2020–21.

Connect with Exactis

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* (formerly known as PreThera Research)