Why We Invested in Ataraxis

Rohan Ganesh | 10/31/2024

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Cancer. It’s the great, horrible equalizer that transcends race, class, and geography. About 1 in 5 people develop cancer in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization, and 1 in 9 men and 1 in 12 women die from the disease.

The good news is that oncology, the study of cancer, is one of, if not the most advanced branch of medicine. Decades of research and technological advances continue to yield ever more granular subtypes of cancer. As a result, more targeted therapies are being developed against those subtypes.

However, all of this research and myriad treatment options—chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, targeted therapies—can make managing a patient’s care challenging for an oncologist. Given the complexity, oncologists need clinical decision support and prognostic tools to tailor treatment.

That’s where Ataraxis comes in. Ataraxis is a precision medicine company that is building AI models to elevate the standard of care in oncology. Obvious co-led the company’s $4M seed round along with Giant Ventures.

Starting with breast cancer, which U.S. women have a 1 in 8 chance of developing, Ataraxis’ AI foundation models analyze several modalities of patient data to predict the recurrence of cancer and treatment responses to help oncologists make better clinical decisions. Ultimately, the company aims to replace molecular diagnostics by providing a fully digital test that has more predictive value.

Ataraxis is led by an incredible team of scientists. The company’s AI advisor is Turing Award winner and Meta’s Chief of AI, Yann LeCun, who is a pioneer in the field of AI and a professor at NYU. Co-founders Jan Witowski MD, PhD, and Krzysztof Geras PhD, spun out the company from NYU, where Jan was a postdoc and Krzysztof is an assistant professor.

Together, they have just the right combination of computational, clinical knowhow, and entrepreneurial drive to fulfill the promise of AI precision medicine. They are hyper-focused on translating AI research breakthroughs to maximize patient impact. Ataraxis ran an 8,000 person retrospective clinical study and generated compelling data that AI precision medicine tests can beat molecular diagnostics tests in accuracy, scope, and clinical utility.

Five years from now, it’s possible that every single breast cancer patient in the U.S. will run Ataraxis’ AI test, which will help tens of thousands of women receive the most optimal treatment at the right time.