INDUSTRIAL IMPACT, MEDICAL
Businesswire | April 24, 2023
Guardant Health, Inc. a leading precision oncology company, is pleased to announce that it will present data from two studies highlighting the performance of its blood-based screening technology to detect early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC), including the acceptance of the ECLIPSE study as a late-breaking abstract, at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) taking place in Chicago, Illinois on May 6-9, 2023.
“Despite multiple screening modalities for colorectal cancer, screening rates remain stubbornly low leaving many cancers undetected. A blood test that can accurately detect CRC represents a significant opportunity to overcome some of the known challenges with patient adherence,” said AmirAli Talasaz, Guardant Health co-CEO. “We are thrilled that DDW has accepted the ECLIPSE study, one of the largest studies of its kind, as a late-breaking abstract, and we look forward to sharing this new data with the healthcare community at this year’s meeting.”
“The need for a convenient, less invasive way to screen for CRC is great, and an accurate blood test can play a critical role in improving screening rates, especially for those reluctant to get screened,” said Daniel Chung, MD, gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “I look forward to presenting at DDW and sharing new data from the ECLIPSE Study on the performance and potential of the Shield blood test to help improve adherence to screening."
About Guardant Health
Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on helping conquer cancer globally through use of its proprietary tests, vast data sets and advanced analytics. The Guardant Health oncology platform leverages capabilities to drive commercial adoption, improve patient clinical outcomes and lower healthcare costs across all stages of the cancer care continuum. Guardant Health has commercially launched Guardant360®, Guardant360 CDx, Guardant360 TissueNext™, Guardant360 Response™, and GuardantINFINITY™ tests for advanced-stage cancer patients, and Guardant Reveal™ for early-stage cancer patients. The Guardant Health screening portfolio, including the commercially launched Shield™ test, aims to address the needs of individuals eligible for cancer screening.
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INDUSTRIAL IMPACT, MEDICAL
Businesswire | May 05, 2023
Paige, a global leader in end-to-end digital pathology solutions and clinical AI applications to assist in diagnosing cancer, announced it is working with Visiopharm, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven precision pathology software provider, to bring a wider range of AI products to doctors and patients. Visiopharm’s AI applications will be deployed and natively integrated into the Paige Platform to be accessed through FullFolio™, Paige’s AI-powered clinical worklist, and viewed within FullFocus®, Paige’s whole-slide image viewer. This deep integration offers users greater diagnostic efficiency and quality insights when reviewing IHC-stained slides and creates a seamless user experience for Visiopharm’s image analysis applications, to help pathologists deliver faster, more accurate and more reproducible cancer diagnoses.
“Improving the pathologist experience to ultimately improve patient care is at the heart of our technology. The Paige and Visiopharm integration offers pathologists thorough image analysis and quantitative assistance on whole-slide images within one AI-native integrated platform,” said Dr. David Klimstra, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Paige. “With this partnership, Paige is furthering our aim to provide the richest portfolio of AI applications delivered through a single platform. In this way, we can increase the impact AI has in helping pathologists diagnose cancer and continue to make the adoption of digital pathology more productive.”
The Paige Platform is interoperable and designed to enable labs to deploy AI-based diagnostic products from AI vendors like Visiopharm, creating one seamless pathology workflow from a single interface. It also integrates with most major scanner vendors and allows bi-directional integration with LIS systems, facilitating a truly open and comprehensive experience.
Digital labs often employ digital technologies from different manufacturers for cancer diagnosis. With AI from Visiopharm and Paige together on a single platform, these labs can have streamlined access to digital images and combined insights together in one place.
Dr. Michael Grunkin, CEO of Visiopharm, stated, "Visiopharm, a global leader in AI-driven precision pathology, delivers standardized decision support for complex tissue biomarkers. Our fully automated (zero-click) applications use a cascade of deep learning networks for slide quality control, tissue detection, tumor identification, and biomarker quantification. Designed to work across various technologies and providers, we join Paige in our commitment to making this technology accessible worldwide on top pathology platforms."
About Paige
Paige is using the power of AI to drive a new era of cancer discovery and treatment. To improve the lives of patients with cancer, Paige has created a cloud-based platform that transforms pathologists’ workflow and increases diagnostic confidence as well as productivity, all on a global scale. Paige is the first company to receive FDA approval for a clinical AI application in digital pathology. The same Paige technology empowers pharmaceutical companies to evaluate treatment options more effectively for patients and design new biomarkers for drug development, so every patient gets precise treatment options.
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MEDTECH, INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Businesswire | April 21, 2023
Twist Bioscience Corporation a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced a collaboration with Astellas Pharma Inc. by which Astellas will license a suite of Twist’s VHH antibody libraries to be used by Astellas for drug discovery and development.
“We are pleased to extend our collaboration with Astellas to three agreements across two groups within the company, showcasing our ability to meet the varying needs of our customers and support their success,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “This latest collaboration with Astellas demonstrates how Twist can enable our customers to grow their pipelines both externally with our antibody discovery services and by supporting their internal discovery with our highly specific and potent antibody libraries.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Astellas will license a suite of Twist’s VHH libraries for a period of five years and will use the libraries to conduct research and development activities. Twist will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible to receive annual maintenance fees and fees per product through payments associated with specific clinical and commercial milestones. Twist will also be eligible to receive royalty payments on product sales.
Twist VHH Antibody Libraries
Antibodies contain two variable domains, the heavy and the light chains. A VHH antibody, also known as a single domain antibody, is the antigen binding domain of the heavy chain, with three complementary determining regions (CDRs), or areas where antigens bind to the antibody. Twist’s VHH libraries use novel methods that combine synthetic and natural approaches to maximize diversity up to 10 billion for each library, creating high quality VHH libraries for use against any protein target. The small size of the VHH antibodies allow them to access targets that traditional antibodies cannot, with tight binding affinity. The modular nature of VHH antibodies supports creation of bi- or multi-specific antibodies ideal for developing next generation therapies specific to oncology, autoimmune disease and virology. During the pandemic, Twist published on the use of these libraries to neutralize SARS-CoV-2.
About Twist Bioscience Corporation
Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. Twist is leveraging its unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development. Twist is also pursuing longer-term opportunities in digital data storage in DNA and biologics drug discovery. Twist makes products for use across many industries including healthcare, industrial chemicals, agriculture and academic research.
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