How Certis Is Rewriting Cancer Models with CEO Peter Ellman

The story of Certis Oncology begins with a patient. In 2012, Barney Berglund was diagnosed with a rare sarcoma. Standard treatments failed him, and though his doctors at UCLA tried to create mouse avatars of his tumor to test drugs, Barney passed away before the models were ready. Out of his family’s grief came a mission: to change the trial-and-error nature of cancer treatment. They joined with physician-scientists and entrepreneur Peter Ellman to found Certis.

* Chapters:

* 0:00 What are PDx models?

* 6:30 Orthotopic experts

* 10:45 Success stories

* 18:45 Winning an AI patent

* 23:40 Business model

* 27:40 The future will be so different

Since then, Certis has become the orthotopic experts—placing patient tumors in the “correct place” inside mice to create more faithful cancer models. These avatars don’t just support research, they’ve helped extend lives. Peter tells the story of one patient who came to him simply hoping to live long enough to dance with his daughter at her wedding. Thanks to Certis’s avatars, he did.

Today, the company is pushing further. They’ve built a tumor bank nearly as large as the NCI’s and, most strikingly, just won a patent for their AI platform. “Patents in AI are rare,” Peter told me. “To us, this one isn’t just a legal win—it’s recognition that our predictive platform is novel and fundamental to how oncology will be done in the future.”

Ellman imagines a not-so-distant future where drug success rates could rise from 10% to 50%, creating a world where “standard of care gives way to truly personalized medicine.”

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