Predictive Oncology Inc (NASDAQ: POAI) is set to be a first mover in the artificial intelligence (AI) powered drug discovery market that the company estimates will grow to $20 billion in the next three years.

The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company outlined its strategy for 2022 and revealed that it plans to leverage its existing pharma relationships to market PeDAL in a move that will take the proprietary platform out of the research lab into the pipelines of oncology drug discovery companies.

Predictive Oncology recently completed its Discovery 21 evaluation, which is the proof-of-concept for PeDAL. CoRE, the company’s AI program, together with tumor profile data, human tumor samples and active machine learning, power PeDAL to determine the most effective drug treatment for a specific cancer type.

Investors responded well, sending shares of Predictive Oncology nearly 5% higher to $0.84 in the pre-market trading session.

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The company explained that with each iteration CoRE learns, so improving the accuracy of the predicted treatment outcomes “as more wet lab experimental data is added to the models”. Identifying the best tumor type early in development leads to a more focused clinical development program, where most drug development dollars are spent, noted the company.

This is moot given that clinical development costs for a new oncology indication work out to over $35 million, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

“The demonstration of our drug discovery platform provides the proof of concept that our pharmaceutical partners have been waiting for,” Predictive Oncology chairman and CEO J Melville (Mel) Engle said in a statement.

“We expect to meet the existing demand from pharmaceutical companies for our solutions, which will help companies streamline their drug discovery processes, increasing the probability of technical success of new molecules entering the clinic. PeDAL provides an additional decision-making tool to oncology drug development companies as they decide which tumor types to invest in and pursue.”

Predictive Oncology expects to sign new partners this year and establish a new revenue stream from PeDAL-powered projects. It will initially roll out its services to the existing network of pharmaceutical companies already working with the company.

The company estimates that PeDAL has the potential to improve the success of molecules going through clinical development. This will result in effective medicines making it to market faster. Significantly, Predictive Oncology stated that it expects to begin generating revenue from its PeDAL platform later this year.

Predictive Oncology is a knowledge-driven company focused on applying artificial intelligence to develop personalized cancer therapies, which can lead to more effective treatments and better patient outcomes. It uses a database of more than 150,000 cancer tumors, categorized by patient type, against drug compounds to determine optimal therapies to be used to ultimately eliminate cancer.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive