Isabl

Isabl is a software plug-and-play infrastructure for scalable bioinformatics operations, developed by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Papaemmanuil Lab. Currently, it assists the MSK Kids pediatric genome project for whole-genome sequencing for clinical cancer care. Due to the internal development of Isabl, Sloan Kettering invested more than $8 million in R&D to develop the software. After realizing that every oncologist should use the software, Sloane Kettering decided to spin-out Isabl as its own company with its primary developer, Elli Papammanuil, as acting CEO.

When receiving cancer treatment, patients typically receive an analysis of their tumors and additional tests that analyze the possibility of a few mutation variations. Sloan Kettering developed a testing process where a tumor sample is first run through an Illumina sequencer to retrieve the whole genome. The genome is then put through the Isabl software to process all possible tumor mutations, impacting treatment options.

Isabl is currently used to assist Sloan Kettering pediatric oncologists in diagnosing and treating pediatric patients with cancer. The software has helped doctors treat various patients and, in four instances, recommended treatments that led to successful recovery that doctors hadn't considered for their patients.

Isabl is developing a fully automated, high-throughput bioinformatic software to support research and clinical workflows. It has plans to include an end-to-end database, algorithms, and visualization systems that link patient clinical and biospecimen data to comprehensive and multimodal genomic data.