🔬 Tempus AI Awarded $60.5M Contract to Support ARPA-H Precision Oncology Program

Oct 13, 2025

It’s good to see, even amid a government shutdown and a tough landscape for research in general, that some federal programs are still thriving.

Modeled after DARPA’s approach to technology development, ARPA-H is a high-risk, high-reward research framework designed to tackle some of the biggest and most intractable problems in biomedicine.

The Advanced Analysis for Precision Cancer Therapy (ADAPT) program aims to understand how biomarkers change as cancers mutate and to build a repository of tools and resources to better target therapies to these changes.

ARPA-H is now partnering with Tempus AI to leverage the company’s AI-driven tests as part of this effort. Tempus AI already integrates large-scale clinical, molecular, and imaging data with artificial intelligence to produce precision oncology diagnostics that help physicians tailor treatments and accelerate therapeutic discovery.

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💭 What are your thoughts on the ARPA-H model compared to more traditional scientific funding mechanisms?
💡 And what other AI-driven innovations show the most promise for advancing precision oncology?

🔗 Source: Tempus AI Awarded $60.5M Contract to Support ARPA-H Precision Cancer Therapy Program

🧬 Patients with Rare Cancers Experience Delays in Treatment

Oct 16, 2025

I cut my teeth in the oncology space studying dysregulated signaling pathways in adrenocortical carcinoma, a rare cancer with a dismal prognosis. To my chagrin, a new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) reveals that care for rare cancer patients is still lagging.

Pulling data from the National Cancer Database (NCDB), researchers analyzed records from 1,756,944 patients diagnosed with rare cancers in the U.S. between 2015 and 2022—representing about 23.4% of all cancer diagnoses during that period.

More than one-third of these patients did not initiate treatment within 30 days of diagnosis, highlighting a persistent gap in timely care for this population.

While the factors influencing time to treatment are complex, greater adoption of precision oncology diagnostic tools may help bridge this gap, by accelerating and improving diagnosis, identifying targeted treatment options, and matching patients with specific mutations to cutting-edge clinical trials that might otherwise be inaccessible.

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💭 How do you think patients with rare cancers can be better served?
🧠 Do you agree that precision oncology tests play a key role in improving care?

🔗 Sources: Individuals With Rare Cancers Present Distinct Diagnosis Patterns; Many Experience Treatment Delays
Abstract, 2025 ASCO Quality Care Symposium