Room4 and MBM sign agreement to introduce leading digital pathology technologies to China
Room4 and MBM have signed an agreement for licensing and technology transfer. MBM has obtained exclusive commercial rights to all Room4 diagnostic products and digital pathology technology platforms in Greater China. These represent leading digital pathology technologies developed in collaboration with the Institute for Cancer Genetics and Informatics (ICGI), Norway.
ICGI is a leading institute in genetic and informatics medicine, involved in many cutting-edge research programmes on cancer diagnosis and prognosis, with wide collaboration with leading universities such as Oxford University and UCL. It is affiliated to Oslo University Hospital and is located at the Norwegian Radium Hospital. Room4 owns the exclusive commercial and IP rights to the products licensed to MBM and developed in collaboration with ICGI.
The technologies and products covered by the agreement include several advanced digital pathology software platforms: an automatic immunohistochemistry (IHC) detection and scoring system (ImmunoPath), an automated Gleason scoring system (Pathtool), promising cancer prognosis stratification technologies, and other digital pathology techniques for clinical or research use. These products and technologies enrich MBM's portfolio and allow it to play a more active role in oncology and digital pathology.
Nucleotyping, the novel cancer prognostic marker included in the deal, is one of ICGI's latest research findings. It classifies tumour tissue through qualitative and quantitative analysis of DNA and chromatin structure in tumour cell nuclei, using advanced high-resolution digital image analysis. This provides objective, quantified prognostic stratification for a wide range of cancers, including gynaecological, prostate and colorectal cancers. Articles on Nucleotyping have been published in The Lancet Oncology and other leading peer-reviewed journals.
MBM also aims to build its strength in smart digital pathology. ImmunoPath is one of the most advanced automated IHC detection and scoring systems in the world and uses deep learning with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Pathtool, the automated Gleason scoring software, is a powerful prostate cancer diagnosis tool, aimed at the "3+4" versus "4+3" Gleason scoring challenge of manual reading.
A shortage of pathologists, the time it takes to train one, and subjective results that vary between operators are continuing challenges in pathology, and there is strong demand to apply AI in this area.
"Thanks to the long-term collaboration and good relationship with ICGI and Room4, we have got the chance to bring these world-class technologies to China. We definitely believe that 'Digital' and 'AI' are the right direction and solution for pathology. MBM will not only introduce these technologies to top hospitals, but also will make efforts on building regional smart digital pathology centres to enable the new technology to benefit more doctors and patients. A new era of smart digital pathology will be opening for us."
Jackson Zhu, founder and CEO, MBM China