Cambridge, MA and Munich, Germany – June 30, 2011 – Metamark Genetics, a privately held oncology molecular diagnostic company, and Definiens, the leading Health Image Intelligence™ company, today announced a development and commercialization partnership in which Metamark will combine its proprietary multiplex protein detection platform with image analysis technology developed jointly with Definiens to deliver innovative prognostic and predictive assays for early-stage cancers.

“Definiens is a clear world leader in quantitative digital pathology and in the analysis of biomarkers in tissue image data,” said Eric Devroe, Ph.D, Vice President of Business & Strategy Development for Metamark. “We see great synergy in combining Definiens’ technology and expertise with Metamark’s unique understanding of tumor heterogeneity and insight into the molecular drivers regulating tumor formation and aggression. We believe that this partnership will enable us to co-develop and implement unique and important image analysis tools.”

Metamark’s quantitative diagnostic approach can identify and account for small regions of molecularly aggressive cancer cells within an otherwise indolent tumor. The company is developing a portfolio of prognostic and predictive assays with the ability to address the “heterogeneous” nature of tumors not only between one patient and the next, but also within an individual patient’s tumor.

Definiens has made ground-breaking achievements in the field of biomarker development based on its highly robust and scalable image analysis framework that enables scientists and clinicians to rapidly extract comprehensive biomarker and morphology expression profiles and to identify a relevant subset of descriptors by correlating them against patient outcomes.

“Definiens is pleased to partner with Metamark Genetics, and to incorporate our image and data analysis software technology into Metamark’s pioneering Oncology diagnostic offerings,” said Thomas Colarusso, Vice President of Sales & Operations for Definiens Inc. “The capability to provide detailed readouts from tissue analysis is opening up new gateways for developing diagnostic assays as we enter the age of personalized medicine. We believe the Definiens Developer XD and Tissue Studio software will enable Metamark to classify tumor heterogeneity of multiplexed tissue stains and derive prognostic and predictive assays.”

Please click here to register:

Aperio and Definiens are proud to present: An Integrated Digital Pathology Workflow for Digital Slide Scanning, Image Management, and Image Analysis

In this complimentary one hour webinar, you will learn about the new solutions available as a result of the partnership between Aperio and Definiens.

Topics include:

• Integrating image acquisition, management, and analysis workflow
• Aperio’s Spectrum database management software for managing digital slides
• A demo of Definiens’ Tissue Studio for Her2 analysis in breast cancer tissue sections

Date: Wednesday, July 6
Time: 11am EST / 8am PST / 4pm GMT

Please click here to register:

Featured Speaker(s):

Aperio: Will Casavan – Product Manager
Aperio: Priya Vaidyanathan – Image Analysis Specialist
Definiens: Dr. Florian Leiss – Trainer and Marketing Specialist.

From the editor:  This is big news out of Ventana today.

Content. Content. Content. Did I say “Content?” New diagnostic assays (i.e., the content), will be the key differentiator going forwards for companies who traditionally have been marketing platform-based systems. Ventana already enjoys the market leader position for automated tissue staining and this latest news is sure to help them hold onto that #1 position. In the drive towards personalized medicine, I believe Ventana and Roche will continue to drive progress especially as it relates to tissue-based diagnostics for cancer patients.

Per the press release below, the main advantage will be that the CISH labeled copies of chrom 17 and the Her2 gene will be visible for longer periods of time, because of the inherent advantages of brightfield vs. immunofluorescence, which will decrease error. Secondly, the turnaround time for results will be shorter which will certainly be welcomed by oncologists and their breast cancer patients.

Congratulations to Ventana. Well done!

From MedPageToday.com