Category: Press Releases

Visiopharm, a leader in AI-based digital pathology, and JiNan Danjier Electronics Co., Ltd, an independent research and development (R&D), manufacturer and sales and service company for healthcare, and the exclusive distributor of 3DHistech digital pathology products in China, have announced a partnership agreement to provide Visiopharm’s digital pathology analysis software across China.

With over ten years of experience supplying digital pathology solutions to China’s national clinical, diagnostics and scientific research fields, JiNan Danjier has installed of over 500 + digital pathology scanners. The new partnership extends JiNan Danjier’s portfolio to include Visiopharm’s research solutions for tissue pathology analysis including AI deep learning methods and multiplex immune cell phenotyping analysis.  These advanced solutions increase JiNan Danjier’s analysis capabilities and applications, which addresses the growing pathology analysis needs in China.

Louise Armstrong, CCO, Visiopharm:

“We’re very excited to team up with JiNan Danjier as a distributor in the fast-growing Chinese precision pathology market. With a decade of experience supplying and supporting digital pathology systems in China, and a wide local distributor network across the Provinces of China, JiNan Danjier have a reputation for maintaining excellent service and building strong relationships with pathology researchers across the country.  The combination of their products, services and team with our precision pathology software will enable Chinese pathologists to use artificial intelligence driven analysis methods to accelerate their research.”

Fan Yujun, general manager, JiNan Danjier:

“We’re looking forward to working with Visiopharm to bring end-to-end digital pathology to the Chinese market. The combination of industry-leading digital pathology hardware with industry-leading digital pathology analysis will be a huge success.”

Visiopharm is pleased to announce the appointment of Morten Frost to its board of directors.

Morten joins with significant strategic consulting, mergers and acquisitions, and global sales and marketing leadership experience. He is currently senior vice president and general manager, pulmonology and breast cancer, at Veracyte, a pioneering genomics diagnostics company based in South San Francisco, California, US.

Prior to Veracyte, Morten worked at Agilent Technologies in a variety of leadership positions. Most recently he served as head of global marketing in the pathology and companion diagnostics business, which are part of Agilent’s diagnostics and genomics group. Morten held multiple other positions at Agilent including executive positions in the global diagnostic sales organization and working with strategy and business development, focusing on organic and inorganic investments to expand the diagnostic business.

Before Agilent, Morten was a management consultant at IMS Consulting Group (now IQVIA), where he advised leading pharmaceutical companies on top-line growth and commercial strategy.

Patrik Dahlen, chairman, Visiopharm said:

“I am delighted to welcome Morten to the Visiopharm board. He brings us a wealth of experience and knowledge, which will be invaluable at a period when the company is rapidly developing new solutions for our diagnostic business, expanding its presence in clinical practice, and successfully partnering with biopharma to develop novel image-analysis based companion diagnostics.”

Michael Grunkin, CEO, Visiopharm said:

“Visiopharm has demonstrated the practical utility and successful commercial deployment of AI-driven precision pathology in three different areas of importance to precision medicine: upstream biomarker discovery with many applications, including immune-oncology; deployment of third generation diagnostic digital pathology in routine clinical practice; underpinning both with AI-driven standardization through stain quality control and management. We are therefore pleased to welcome Morten who has spent many years embedded in the intersection between drug-diagnostic co-development, and commercial deployment of new (companion) tissue diagnostic assays. His deep network, knowledge and visions for how these technologies can be leveraged across the continuum from biopharma co-development to deployment in the routine clinical diagnostic market will be a major asset to Visiopharm, as we continue to further consolidate and expand our position in this field.”

Morten Frost said:

“I’m excited about joining Visiopharm’s board of directors and being able to support the growth trajectory at a time where the opportunities are plentiful across the application areas for which image analysis is relevant. I have monitored the digital pathology market for years and I believe that Visiopharm is very well-positioned to lead the adoption of image analysis into the routine diagnostic setting and establishing their offerings as a new standard of care. Visiopharm’s holistic view of the unmet needs across the lab continuum including pre-analytical factors, proficiency testing and interpretation support, comes unmatched. In many ways Visiopharm has been ahead of the market and the demand, but there is currently a significant pull-through from labs around the world who recognize the clinical benefits of image analysis as a way of improving quality, standardization and clinical decision making – removing the unnecessary variables.”

Morten Frost will formally be elected as board member at the next annual general meeting, however, he joins immediately as a board member elect and will thus be an important addition to the work of the board of directors of Visiopharm.

Visiopharm, a leader in AI-based digital pathology, and Ultivue, a leader in multiplexing for tissue biomarker analysis, today announced a new co-marketing partnership to promote a workflow with Ultivue´s UltiMapper I/O Immuno8 panel and subsequent image analysis. The workflow will standardize tissue biomarkers investigation of cellular immunophenotypes.

Visiopharm and Ultivue will deliver advanced tissue biomarker staining and analysis research solutions for immuno-oncology programs. The partnership leverages the companies’ capabilities and experience in multiplex immuno-profiling to enable its biopharma customers to carry out advanced analysis of the tumor microenvironment. The technologies from both companies are ideally suited to elevate biomarker discovery and analysis within the tumor microenvironment. For biomarker programs, the solution will provide actionable insights to advance tissue biomarker strategies.

Mark Rees, Ph.D., VP of corporate development, Ultivue, said:

“Ultivue have the best-in-class multiplex IF technology platform which together with our rapid custom service can deliver high-quality complex assay solutions to Biopharma and CRO partners in record turnaround times. Visiopharm offers the best image analysis technology for immunoprofiling; this exciting new partnership strengthens the workflow and analytics for advanced analysis of the tumor microenvironment, which ensures that we can deliver the essential data that is needed to expedite decision-making in biomarker programs.”

Adrian Arechiga, Ph.D., chief marketing officer, Visiopharm, said:

“Success in immunotherapy is driving the need for prognostic and predictive assays to inform patient selection and stratification. This requirement can be met by a combination of multiplexed staining, image analysis and artificial intelligence. This co-marketing partnership is underpinned by a joint vision of providing biopharma with exceptional tools for immunoprofiling through spatial analysis of tumor-immune cell interactions. Ultivue’s multiplexing kits and Visiopharm’s AI-based tissue mining tools are ideally suited to provide high-quality and in-depth insights that can move biomarker programs forward, ultimately resulting in the next generation of assays that may inform patient care.”

To learn more about this collaboration, products and events, see here.

Visiopharm, a leader in AI-based digital pathology, announced it will be presenting innovations for tissue biomarker standardization at the upcoming 2021 United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) virtual meeting. In parallel, the company will launch its early access program to improve stain quality management, which is a critical aspect of standardized tissue biomarker assessment.

USCAP’s annual meeting is the largest pathology meeting in the US. The meeting consists of more than 40 divisions of specialized committee meetings, seminars, and presentations covering the latest innovations in pathology.

Visiopharm is enabling tissue pathology to enter the realm of precision medicine through a suite of AI-driven tools for precision pathology. AI is used for standardizing several steps along the journey from biopsy to data. Stain quality management and next generation image analysis are just two of the critical steps that will be discussed at USCAP.

At the Visiopharm sponsored seminar, the company will review the types and magnitude of standardization challenges in clinical workflows and offer potential solutions in precision pathology using digital image analysis based on AI. The seminar will furthermore discuss the regulatory pathways for digital and precision pathology.

“Visiopharm has over 20 years of experience and has mapped, quantified and mitigated error sources all along the value chain. We are taking radical and innovative approaches towards the standardized assessment of biomarkers. We look forward to discuss our observations and learnings with pathologists and other experts in the field at the upcoming seminar.”

Michael Grunkin, CEO, Visiopharm

Michael Grunkin, CEO, Visiopharm, said: “Visiopharm has over 20 years of experience and has mapped, quantified and mitigated error sources all along the value chain. We are taking radical and innovative approaches towards the standardized assessment of biomarkers. We look forward to discuss our observations and learnings with pathologists and other experts in the field at the upcoming seminar.”

Visiopharm will also unveil its Qualitopix early access program, providing selected participants access to their latest solutions to standardize tissue biomarker staining. The labs that join the program will be at the forefront of biomarker quality & standardization.

Dirk Vossen, chief diagnostic officer, Visiopharm, said: “AI-powered quantitative assessment of biomarker expression offers a route to improve the histological and immunohistochemical staining quality and interpretation of the expression of critical biomarkers such as PD-L1 and Ki67. We are excited to announce our early access program that provides quality and standardization solutions.”

To learn more about the early access program, click here.

Visiopharm is pleased to announce the appointment of James Mansfield as senior vice president, research business development.

James has worked in the sector for over 20 years and brings a wealth of experience, particularly internationally, in leading collaboration with scientists and partners. He also has a strong scientific publication record.

Most recently, James was Scientific Director at Magnetic Insight Inc, a start-up commercializing a novel molecular imaging technology called magnetic particle imaging (MPI).

Prior to this role, he had senior positions at Cambridge Research & Instrumentation, Inc (CRi) and PerkinElmer. During his time at PerkinElmer, he played a leading role in the team that commercialized multispectral imaging for pathology.

At Visiopharm, James will support the continued development of automated phenotyping software, support pharma services in team for biomarker discovery projects using multiplexed analysis, and advise our customer and clients on how to incorporate multiplexed analysis tools in their research programs.

In this role, James will also be driving our sales channel expansion strategies across Asia Pacific, where he has significant experience of introducing new imaging and analysis technologies and applications.

“The experience James brings in this highly specialized field, will not only allow us to continue to be the technology leaders in this field, but also support scientists is the most efficient use of such tools for their research.”

Michael Grunkin, CEO of Visiopharm

Michael Grunkin, CEO of Visiopharm said: “With the emergence of increasingly sophisticated multiplexed imaging techniques, tissue pathology offers an attractive spatially resolved and multi-dimensional platform for understanding the tumor-micro-environment. This in turn, is driving a demand for tools for analysis of increasingly complex image datasets, with uses in for example biomarker discovery projects. This demand is supported by our portfolio AI-driven automated phenotyping software tools.

“The experience James brings in this highly specialized field, will not only allow us to continue to be the technology leaders in this field, but also support scientists is the most efficient use of such tools for their research.”

James Manfield said: “Visiopharm has led the way in pathology analysis for two decades, and have always been the leader in multiplexed pathology analysis. The new emphasis on artificial intelligence for the segmentation of images into tissue types and for the multimarker phenotyping of immune and other cells is going to have a huge impact on cancer immunology research today, and eventually on clinical decision-making. I’m looking forward to working with the team on making the software even better for Visiopharm’s customers, and to helping grow multiplexed pathology analysis towards the clinic.”