In a tongue twister of a collaboration, partners Paige and Perspectum plan to pool pathology tools to progress prospective studies.
Both companies are developing artificial intelligence-powered software that analyzes standard tissue samples to help pathologists make more accurate diagnoses and guide treatment. Paige’s work so far has focused on designing algorithms to detect breast and prostate cancers, while Perspectum has found success in its own liver-scanning program.
By combining their technologies, Paige and Perspectum are aiming to improve pathology workflows in late-stage clinical trials. Their software platforms will give researchers easier access to automated tissue analysis and also help identify more significant biomarkers in those analyses to guide research.
In the partnership, Perspectum will offer up its digital pathology software. The cloud-based portal was designed specifically for use in clinical trials and combines Perspectum’s imaging technology with pathology lab ProPath’s analysis to provide a one-stop shop for imaging, analysis and data management.
That software will integrate with Paige’s platform, which uses machine learning algorithms trained on millions of tumor slides to detect signs of cancer and identify areas of interest in imaging data and discover potential new biomarkers to guide treatment options.
The collaboration will focus largely on improving clinical studies of solutions to diagnose and treat liver disease, according to Paige CEO Leo Grady. He added, “Through this partnership, we will work with Perspectum to expand the use of our technology and products for life sciences.”
At the core of Paige’s platform is the FullFocus viewer, which can be used by researchers and pathologists to navigate and examine surgical tissue images generated by standard commercial whole slide imaging scanners. FullFocus was cleared by the FDA in July 2020.
Since then, Paige has tacked on further regulatory approvals for its tumor-specific offerings, receiving two CE marks in late 2020 for its AI-powered breast and prostate cancer tools.
The first of these scans breast tissue biopsies to spot possible signs of cancer, while also factoring in each individual patient’s medical history to ensure it sends out only the most accurate alerts to oncologists. The prostate cancer software focuses on the later stages of cancer treatment, grading known malignant tumors to predict the cancer’s progression and help care teams determine the most effective treatment plan.
Perspectum, meanwhile, has also found recent regulatory success. Earlier this year, the U.K.-based startup secured 510(k) clearance from the FDA for Hepatica, its automated liver analysis software.
Hepatica uses AI to read and delineate MRI images, providing measurements of a liver’s size, inflammation and fat content to help surgeons remove only as much tissue as necessary to treat liver cancer. The software also analyzes the liver as a whole to predict how patients will fare after surgery.