Author: Visiopharm

Partnership to unify spatial staining and imaging with AI analysis technologies in end-to-end solution for researchers studying cancer and other diseases.

Lausanne, Switzerland and Hørsholm, Denmark – May 4, 2022 – 5:00 pm (CET)

Lunaphore, a Swiss life sciences company developing technology to enable spatial biology in every laboratory, and Visiopharm, a company developing A.I.-driven precision pathology software, today announced a new partnership that will unite staining and imaging with A.I. analysis capabilities. Under the partnership, the companies will co-market a complete end-to-end solution that offers hyperplex immunofluorescence staining, image acquisition and subsequent analysis with deep learning.

The combined offering will include Lunaphore’s COMET™, which can perform automated, hyperplex immunofluorescence staining and imaging, and Visiopharm’s Oncotopix® Discovery, an easy-to-use deep learning solution for tissue-based cancer research. COMET™ and Oncotopix® Discovery are compatible natively, and the combined offering provides an all-encompassing, interoperable spatial biology and data analysis solution for researchers.

Visiopharm is a world leader in A.I.-driven precision pathology software with over two decades experience pioneering innovation in digital pathology and partnering with the most recognized names in tissue-based disease research. With the launch of Oncotopix® Discovery, the most robust version of their respected research image analysis software platform to date, Visiopharm brings the power of deep learning to all. Oncotopix® Discovery allows any scientist, not just image analysis experts, to use their understanding of tissue morphology to train an A.I. deep learning APP to get accurate and reproducible data. The software also features the Multiplex Phenotyping module, an essential tool for investigating the tumor microenvironment revealed by staining platforms such as Lunaphore’s COMET™.  

“The technology for staining and imaging multiplexed images is improving rapidly. However, the challenge is how to make sense of what is there,” says James Mansfield, Senior Vice President, Research Business Development at Visiopharm. “How do we interpret highplex staining in a way that not only reveals meaningful insights but does so accurately and reproducibly? That has been our focus from the beginning in developing our Multiplex Phenotyping module. We give researchers a beginning-to-end solution to create a cell phenotype map of the tissue microenvironment and then a set of helpful visualization tools like t-SNE plots and matrixes to verify and interpret the data.”

“That is where we see a powerful synergy between Visiopharm and Lunaphore,” Mansfield continued. “We are both interested in arming researchers with tools to conduct spatial biology analysis that deliver reproducible results. This is essential for true advancement to be made in both basic and especially translational studies.” 

With superior tissue profiling capabilities, the COMET™ platform allows a multiplex analysis of up to 40 separate spatial markers per tissue slide without human intervention. COMET™ has a wide range of research applications across immuno-oncology, neuroscience, and infectious diseases.  

“Our partnership with Visiopharm allows us to create a unified technology solution that can enhance our understanding of cancer pathology,” said Déborah Heintze, Chief Marketing Officer of Lunaphore. “By combining our leading spatial biology platform with Visiopharm’s deep learning capabilities, this collaboration can make it easier for laboratories to adopt and integrate spatial biology solutions for their research.”  

To learn more about the COMET™ platform

Learn more about Lunaphore

Learn more about Oncotopix Discovery

About Lunaphore

Lunaphore Technologies S.A. is a Swiss company born in 2014 with the vision of enabling spatial biology in every laboratory. Lunaphore has developed a game-changing chip technology which can extract spatial proteomic and genomic data from tumors and transform any simple assay into multiplex spatial biology without complexity. Lunaphore empowers researchers to push the boundaries of research to ultimately develop the next generation personalized therapies. For further information on Lunaphore and its products, please visit www.lunaphore.com. 

About Visiopharm

Visiopharm® is a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software. Their pioneering image analysis tools support thousands of scientists, pathologists, and image analysis experts in academic institutions, biopharmaceutical industry, and diagnostic centers. AI-based image analysis and tissue mining tools support research and drug development research worldwide, while CE-IVD APPs support primary diagnostics. With the most advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence and deep learning, Visiopharm delivers tissue data mining tools, precision results, and workflows. 

Visiopharm was founded in 2002 and is privately owned. The company operates internationally with over 900 licenses and countless users in more than 40 countries. The company headquarters are in Denmark’s Medicon Valley, with offices in Sweden, England, Germany, Netherlands and United States. 

For further information contact:

Irene Tamayo

Lunaphore Corporate Communications

Email: communications@lunaphore.com

Michelle Oswald

Marketing Manager, Research

Email: mos@visiopharm.com

Visiopharm is pleased to announce that Johanne Louise Brændgaard has been appointed Chief Marketing Officer.

Johanne will play a vital part in executing Visiopharm’s strategy in AI-driven precision and high-throughput pathology, with responsibility for brand strategy and awareness, customer experience and commercial marketing.

Johanne brings extensive global experience of sales, marketing, and product management within the medical technology industry from previous positions at Cook Medical and Getinge. She also has experience from the telecommunications and venture capital industries.

Johanne is currently on the board of ADDvise AB, having previously been on the board of Acarix AB.

Johanne has a master’s degree in International Business Economics from Aalborg University in Denmark.

Michael Grunkin, Visiopharm CEO said:

“We are delighted to welcome Johanne. She is a great fit with the team, culture and values of the company and brings a personality with her that will naturally facilitate cross-functional collaboration. That, in combination with her extensive experience in the medical technology industry, will be a great asset as we continue to move forward with our ambitious marketing goals.”

Johanne Louise Brændgaard said:

“I’m excited to have joined Visiopharm at this critical time and be part of the mission to transform pathology through our AI-driven solutions. This will enable our customers to have a much stronger foundation for making diagnostic and treatment decisions for cancer patients, which in turn can have significant socio-economic impact due to lower rates of misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment.”

Augsburg University Hospital, one of Germany’s leading hospitals, has selected Visiopharm, a world-leading developer of precision AI image analysis software, to realise its ambition of becoming a digital pathology powerhouse.

The partnership will see Visiopharm implement its digital pathology software to accelerate the hospital’s diagnostic workflows, to provide faster diagnoses to patients and even with a higher degree of accuracy.

The hospital will be using Visiopharm’s CE-IVD marked APPs, starting with HER2 and then expanding to other APPs like ER, PR, Ki67 and lymph node metastasis detection to quantify breast cancer biomarkers.

The partnership builds on an existing collaboration between Visiopharm and Prof Ralf Huss, a member of Visiopharm’s Scientific Advisory Board and Head of the Center for Digital Medicine at Augsburg Hospital. In a collaborative paper published recently, Augsburg pathologists reported on the use of Visiopharm’s AI software to discover an impaired maturation of dendritic cells leading to an inadequate T-cell response in severe cases of COVID patients at the hospital.

Augsburg and Visiopharm intend to collaborate on demonstrating the value of introducing digital pathology and AI into the clinical workflow with the aim for Augsburg to confirm its role as a reference site for other hospitals to base best practice on. This will involve conducting scientific and rigorous studies, as well as developing and testing new algorithms for diagnostic decision support, stain quality management and slide control.

To ensure a seamless workflow, Visiopharm software will be integrated into the existing pathology workflow of the pathology department, together with NEXUS AG, which is the provider of the laboratory information system used in Augsburg.

Michael Grunkin, Visiopharm CEO said:

“We’re excited to be given this opportunity to help Augsburg University Hospital achieve their digital transformation ambition. It’s an exciting milestone to modernize their pathology services and show the value of a fully digital workflow in improving patient care. Throughout the project, we very much look forward to sharing what we achieve together with the healthcare community.”

Prof Bruno Märkl, Institute for Pathology and Molecular Diagnosis, Augsburg University Hospital said:

“This is the beginning of a new chapter for our hospital’s future. With Visiopharm’s AI software we can introduce a truly digital workflow, which includes diagnostic decision support and enables standardization of stain quality. The whole team is determined to deliver the best quality of care for our patients, and we cannot do this without digitizing our pathology workflow. Hopefully we can inspire other hospitals to follow in our footsteps.”

About Visiopharm

Visiopharm® is a world-leading developer of precision AI image analysis software. Their pioneering image analysis tools support thousands of scientists, pathologists, and image analysis experts in academic institutions, biopharmaceutical industry, and diagnostic centers. AI-based image analysis and tissue mining tools support research and drug development research worldwide, while CE-IVD APPs support primary diagnostics. With the most advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence and deep learning, Visiopharm delivers tissue data mining tools, precision results, and workflows.

Visiopharm was founded in 2002 and is privately owned. The company operates internationally with over 900 licenses and countless users in more than 40 countries. The company headquarters are in Denmark’s Medicon Valley, with offices in Sweden, England, Germany, Netherlands and United States.

Proscia®, a leader in digital and computational pathology solutions, and Visiopharm, a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver integrated AI-enabled solutions that aim to improve clinical decision making for cancer care. Through the collaboration, the partners will advance the use of AI-enabled solutions to deliver new insights to pathologists for two of the most common cancer diagnoses.

Driven by a growing base of evidence on the economic and clinical benefits of adoption, leading laboratories are increasingly looking to adopt AI in routine practice to optimize operations and improve patient care. In a Nature survey of pathologists, 75% expressed interest in using AI to facilitate workflow and quality improvements, and 80% expected to be using AI by 2028. Powerful computational applications such as Visiopharm’s portfolio of breast and colon solutions have highlighted the role that AI could play in improving diagnosis for an increasingly large portion of lab volume. However, a key barrier to deriving the full value of AI is the lab’s ability to seamlessly integrate this diverse range of applications into routine operations.

Proscia and Visiopharm have joined forces to deliver a unified solution that combines Visiopharm’s suite of CE-IVD* clinical AI applications – including breast IHC markers, breast metastasis detection, and colon metastasis detection – with Proscia’s CE-IVD Concentriq Dx platform** for image-based data and workflow management. Users of Concentriq Dx can now leverage the full suite of Visiopharm’s AI applications directly in the routine workflow, helping pathologists quantify the expression of biomarkers aiming to accelerate treatment decisions for patient care. This marks an expansion of the companies’ existing collaboration integrating AI-enabled solutions which have successfully driven breakthroughs in translational research and advance precision medicine for life sciences companies.

“We are excited about expanding our successful partnership in the research market to include the clinical market,” said Michael Grunkin, CEO of Visiopharm. “With Visiopharm’s commitment to AI-driven Precision Pathology, and Proscia’s commitment to interoperability and digital workflow solutions for pathology labs, this integrated solution combines efficient workflows and support for optimal treatment decisions to our clinical customers.” *

“Our unified solution will equip pathologists with powerful AI applications to quantify expression of biomarkers aiming to significantly improve treatment decisions,” said David West, CEO of Proscia. “Ultimately, this will enable pathologists to fully realize AI’s potential in unlocking insights that remain hidden to the human eye, helping to advance the way we understand and treat disease, driving accuracy in diagnosis, and establishing prognosis and personalized therapies for patients.”

Click here to learn more about how Visiopharm and Proscia are helping organizations to realize the full promise of their digital pathology data.

References

*Visiopharm’s clinical AI IVDs are certified under IVDR in Europe only. These are not for diagnostic purposes in US.

**Concentriq Dx is CE-marked for in-vitro diagnostic use in Europe and available for primary diagnosis in the US during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

About Visiopharm

Visiopharm® is a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software. Their pioneering image analysis tools support thousands of scientists, pathologists, and image analysis experts in academic institutions, biopharmaceutical industry, and diagnostic centers. AI-based image analysis and tissue mining tools support research and drug development research worldwide, while CE-IVD APPs support primary diagnostics. With the most advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence and deep learning, Visiopharm delivers tissue data mining tools, precision results, and workflows.

Visiopharm was founded in 2002 and is privately owned. The company operates internationally with over 900 licenses and countless users in more than 40 countries. The company headquarters are in Denmark’s Medicon Valley, with offices in Sweden, England, Germany, Netherlands and United States.

About Proscia

Proscia is a software company that is accelerating pathology’s digital transformation to change the way we understand diseases like cancer. Its Concentriq digital pathology platform and powerful AI applications are advancing the 150-year-old standard of research and diagnosis towards a data-driven discipline, unlocking new insights that accelerate discovery, improve patient outcomes, and fulfill the promise of precision care. Leading diagnostic laboratories and over 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies rely on Proscia’s software each day. For more information, visit proscia.com.

Visiopharm, a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software, today announced Oncotopix® Discovery, a solution for tissue-based cancer research. This makes the most recent advances in AI and deep learning available as part of a comprehensive research platform. 

Oncotopix Discovery is designed for all researchers and allows users to tackle both simple and the most complex datasets, to generate reliable quantitative results needed for breakthrough discoveries and publications.

Oncotopix Discovery provides:

Deep learning for all

Easy to use AI deep learning is now integrated as standard in all analysis packages for all tissue research applications.

See it, Train it, Find it

Anyone with an understanding of tissue morphology can train an AI deep learning APP to get accurate and reproducible results.

Pre-trained knowledge

New analysis packages include powerful pre-trained nuclei segmentation APPs suitable for brightfield and fluorescence applications which can be further tuned for even more specificity.

Best-in-class platform

Powered by Visiopharm’s best-in-class image analysis platform, combining 20 years of tissue expertise with innovative state-of-the-art technology.

Dirk Vossen, Visiopharm Chief Diagnostics Officer said:

“We’ve learned from our customers that although many recognise our software as best in class, particularly for demanding applications, there was an overall impression that the software was sometimes difficult to navigate and use. Therefore, it was best suited for use by experienced image analysis experts. We listened, and we have created Oncotopix Discovery, putting deep learning at the base of everything we provide. It means anyone, irrespective of their experience with image analysis software, can now get what they need from the best-in-class digital pathology image analysis solution.”

Louise Armstrong, Visiopharm Chief Commercial Officer said:

“Oncotopix Discovery enables users to get accurate and reliable results across a wide range of research applications including cancer research and neuroscience. Any user that understands cellular and tissue morphology can annotate slides to train our deep learning networks. By combining the researcher’s scientific knowledge with our tissue analysis expertise, anyone can generate the robust quantitative data needed for research studies and publication. We can’t wait to help a new group of biologists, medical researchers and pathologists accelerate their breakthroughs with Oncotopix Discovery.”

Learn more about Oncotopix Discovery.

About Visiopharm

Visiopharm® is a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software. Their pioneering image analysis tools support thousands of scientists, pathologists, and image analysis experts in academic institutions, biopharmaceutical industry, and diagnostic centers. AI-based image analysis and tissue mining tools support research and drug development research worldwide, while CE-IVD APPs support primary diagnostics. With the most advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence and deep learning, Visiopharm delivers tissue data mining tools, precision results, and workflows.

Visiopharm was founded in 2002 and is privately owned. The company operates internationally with over 900 licenses and countless users in more than 40 countries. The company headquarters are in Denmark’s Medicon Valley, with offices in Sweden, England, Germany, Netherlands and United States.

Visiopharm, a world leader in AI-driven precision pathology software, today announced that its existing portfolio of diagnostic apps have all been certified under the new In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR).

The major difference between the IVDD and the IVDR is the focus on performance evaluation and post market follow up. It’s not new that the safety, effectiveness as well as all product claims need to be substantiated with evidence. What is new, is the technical documentation review is focusing on whether the evidence is scientific and sound. As far as known, Visiopharm is the first digital pathology company to have their IVD devices certified under the IVDR.

Esther Abels, Chief Clinical and Regulatory Officer, Visiopharm said:

“This certification shows that we have our processes in place to ensure we deliver quality products to the clinical field. It is an important milestone in our continuous effort to support the pathology community to enhance capabilities in precision pathology with the goal to optimise patient care. In addition, this milestone is a stepping stone for our entry into the US market.”

Michael Grunkin, CEO, Visiopharm said:

“We have long had a strong strategic focus on AI-driven precision pathology supporting optimal treatment decisions based on companion-diagnostic tissue biomarkers. This includes development and deployment of integrated computational assays for standardisation through decision support and stain quality management. Regulatory approvals is a core-component of that strategy, and we are extremely proud to be the first digital pathology company, to the best of our knowledge, to announce that all our clinical apps are now certified under the new legislation. Our integrated computational assays are currently deployed on our diagnostic enterprise solution for fully digital pathology labs. Qualitopix will shortly introduce these apps on a novel diagnostic platform for partially digital pathology labs.”