Introducing Valius: The maximalist approach to cancer diagnostics

We built Valius with a simple goal: enable cancer patients to understand as much as possible about the molecular makeup of their tumor, so that they can utilize the most effective and personalized therapies.

Conceptually, this is uncontroversial. But this sort of “maximalist” diagnostic approach is not common today, even at leading academic centers.

There are a lot of reasonable-sounding explanations for why. There are reimbursement criteria that limit what insurance companies will pay for, which drives clinicians to order basic, well-reimbursed molecular profiling rather than more comprehensive tests. There are regulatory restrictions that limit what information can be reported to patients and acted upon, such that diagnostics companies only report a sliver of what they measure.

Then there is the practical reality that the maximalist approach requires a lot of downstream work: for example, assessing the efficacy and safety profile of a biologically plausible but off-label agent, engaging with insurance companies on access and coverage, and/or filling out the paperwork for a single-patient IND.

But we believe these reasonable explanations together have created a very unreasonable state of affairs: as a cancer patient, it’s extremely hard to go above and beyond to understand and fight your disease.

So, we built Valius to make it easier.

What does this mean?

It means doing a fulsome analysis of our patients’ highly expressed and actionable cell surface targets, at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels, and evaluating all potential therapeutic options, be they commercially available or investigational.

It means assessing the heterogeneity of these targets to intelligently inform combination or sequential therapies.

It means mapping out likely resistance mechanisms in advance, and determining how to both find resistance early and combat it if it occurs.

Most importantly, it means partnership with patients. Fighting cancer is hard, both physically and emotionally. The challenge with truly personalized medicine is that it's even harder. There often aren't well-trodden rails and cohort-based wisdom to rely upon.

At Valius, we're dedicated to partnering with patients and their care teams to make it easier.

We refer to this approach as “partnerships, not PDFs.”

Most diagnostics companies present their output as static reports, with minimal ability to go deeper. Valius gives patients access to all of their data, and intuitive software to explore, query, and share it. In the age of increasingly intelligent AI that can help patients think through their care, we think this is very obviously the right choice.

Many elements of the maximalist approach are different. It doesn't fit neatly within the existing reimbursement frameworks. But we’re building Valius because if we or our loved ones got cancer – especially an aggressive form where the standard of care yields poor outcomes – it’s the approach we’d take.

Slowly but surely, we are winning the war on cancer. The tools at our disposal now – CAR-T therapies, ultra-sensitive ctDNA tests, single cell RNA sequencing – would boggle the mind of clinicians from even a decade ago.

But the fact that we’re winning is less interesting than when we win. That’s what matters to patients. At Valius, our goal is to pull forward the surrender date.

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