UPMC Enterprises Portfolio Company is Supporting Precision Diagnostics at UPMC

Oncology treatment has changed dramatically over the past several years. New targeted therapies, immunotherapies, and combination treatments have helped many patients live longer and with better quality of life. However, the way cancer is monitored during treatment has not advanced at the same pace.

Today, oncologists rely heavily on imaging scans and tissue biopsies to understand how a patient’s cancer is responding to therapy. While these tools remain essential, they provide only occasional snapshots of a disease that is constantly changing. Scans are done weeks or months apart, and tissue biopsies are invasive and difficult to repeat. As a result, important biological changes, such as early signs of treatment resistance or disease progression can be easily missed.

Clinicians frequently identify treatment failure only after clear disease progression has occurred. This reactive approach limits the ability to intervene earlier, when adjustments in care may be more effective and better tolerated by patients.

At UPMC Enterprises, we focus on identifying and supporting technologies and companies that address gaps like this, areas where current tools fall short and limit timely decision-making. One of those companies is Precede Biosciences, which is developing liquid biopsy tests for cancer. In oncology, there is an urgent need for methods that allow clinicians to monitor cancer over time in a way that is both meaningful and practical for routine care.

UPMC Enterprises in January joined an investment round for Precede Bio, highlighting how we support world-class cancer care at UPMC and deliver value to our portfolio companies by leveraging the clinical and research expertise of one of the nation’s largest integrated health systems.

Rethinking the Role of Liquid Biopsy

Liquid biopsy has gained attention as a promising tool for cancer monitoring. By analyzing cancer-related material in a blood sample, liquid biopsy offers a less invasive way to assess disease status. Because blood draws are relatively simple, they can be done more frequently, making liquid biopsy well suited for tracking changes over time.

Most well-known liquid biopsy tests today focus on reading DNA mutations in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), or on tracking minimal residual disease based on tumor-informed genetic markers. These approaches can be useful for specific questions, but they provide limited insight into cancer biology. Cancer behavior is shaped by more than individual mutations and focusing on a single marker at a single point in time may miss important, actionable signals.

Precede Bio takes a different approach. Instead of assessing DNA mutations, Precede Bio’s technology is designed to read out on tumor gene expression by pairing the profiling of epigenomic signals on ctDNA with sophisticated machine learning. Importantly, approach can be used to assess the expression of key cell-surface targets, the very markers many precision oncology drugs now rely on to deliver toxic payloads directly to tumor cells. By capturing both target expression and underlying pathway activity, this approach provides a more dynamic view of disease behavior, including how tumors may respond to specific therapies over time.

Facilitated by UPMC Enterprises, Precede Bio has partnered with researchers at UPMC to study how blood-based signals change throughout the course of disease, rather than focusing on a single marker at a single moment.

Building on Clinical and Scientific Expertise

Working with Adrian V. Lee, PhD, director of the Institute for Precision Medicine, and Steffi Oesterreich, PhD, a leading expert in breast cancer biology and endocrine resistance, they helped shape the scientific direction of the work from the beginning. Their involvement ensured that research questions were grounded in real clinical challenges, and that study designs reflected how patients are treated and monitored.

In the first phase of the collaboration, the focus was on using real clinical samples that capture the complexity and natural variation seen in everyday cancer care. Testing the platform on true clinical samples, rather than only controlled research materials, was essential for assessing whether the approach could reliably detect meaningful biological signals under real-world conditions. This early work allowed the team to confirm that the signals detected in blood were measurable and consistent across real-world clinical specimens, laying the groundwork for deeper clinical investigation in future phases.

As the partnership moves into its next phase, the emphasis is shifting to more rigorous clinical evaluation of Precede Bio’s tests using larger and more diverse sample sets collected over time from patients receiving real-world care and incorporating outcomes and real-world treatment information. This stage aims to build evidence on how the tests perform and ultimately, these studies will help generate the evidence needed to develop a clinical panel test that clinicians can confidently use in real-world oncology practice.

“This collaboration demonstrates how blood-based approaches can provide longitudinal insights into disease evolution and help guide therapy selection, moving us beyond a ‘treat, watch, and wait’ model toward real-time intervention,” Dr. Lee said.

By combining scientific rigor with clinical context early on, the collaboration is reducing the risk that promising research findings fail to translate into practical tools for patient care.

The Importance of Real-World Biospecimens

The Pitt Biospecimen Core (PBC) is a centralized biorepository supported through a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC. It provides researchers with high-quality, well-annotated human biospecimens that advance biomedical research, including studies of cancer and other complex diseases.

Access to this unique collection of patient samples enabled Precede Bio and its collaborators to analyze specimens representing diverse patient populations and multiple stages of disease. Critically, these analyses relied on real-world samples obtained through routine clinical care rather than artificially constructed research cohorts. This approach provided the scale and clinical relevance necessary to assess whether Precede Bio’s methodology could perform reliably in settings that closely reflect everyday medical practice.

As diagnostic tests progress from early discovery to full clinical validation, biospecimen collection will expand beyond the PBC to include prospectively collected samples from routine clinical care and clinical trial biobanks.

From Collaboration to Investment

UPMC’s involvement with Precede Bio has extended beyond academic collaboration. The health system supported early development and validation efforts by providing access to patient samples, clinical expertise, and real-world clinical context, resources that are often difficult for early-stage diagnostics companies to secure.

As Precede Bio matured, it continued to work closely with UPMC while advancing its technology. During this period, UPMC Enterprises conducted a thorough evaluation of the company’s approach, focusing on Precede Bio’s scientific foundation, clinical relevance, and potential to scale.

Diligence was led by Ketki Karanam, vice president, UPMC Enterprises, who assessed the opportunity from both a health care impact and commercialization perspective. The evaluation considered whether the technology could integrate into real clinical workflows, deliver meaningful insights for clinicians, and be applied across different health systems.

Based on this analysis, UPMC Enterprises made its strategic investment in Precede Bio, combining capital with ongoing support and continued scientific collaboration.

“As precision oncology continues to evolve beyond purely mutation-driven approaches, Precede Bio’s technology is well positioned to play a critical role in aligning patients with therapeutic decisions informed by real-time tumor biology. We look forward to future advancements and collaborations with a company we believe has the potential to meaningfully benefit patients,” Karanam said.

Looking Ahead

Liquid biopsy is expected to play an increasingly important role in cancer care. When developed and validated carefully, these tools can offer accessible insight into how a disease is behaving and how a patient is responding to treatment.

Crucially, platforms like Precede Bio’s, by revealing both which therapeutic targets are present on tumor cells and what biological programs are active, can help clinicians make more informed treatment selection decisions, especially in metastatic settings where therapy choice is paramount. This has the potential to support more proactive care, reduce unnecessary interventions, and improve outcomes for patients.

UPMC Enterprises is committed to supporting technologies that can deliver real value in clinical practice. Through early collaboration, access to real-world data, and strategic investment, we aim to advance the next generation of precision cancer care and demonstrate how health systems can lead innovation from discovery to real-world impact.

Next Steps

• Learn more about Precede Biosciences and now the company is breaking down barriers to precision medicine. 

• Read about UPMC Enterprises’ new initiatives and achievements in our latest Annual Report. 

Note: UPMC has a financial interest in Precede Biosciences.