BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET
Prnewswire | April 05, 2023
PathAI, a global leader in AI-powered pathology, announced the launch of PathExplore™, the world's first structured, standardized and scalable panel of human interpretable features (HIFs) offering unprecedented resolution of the tumor microenvironment (TME) from H&E whole-slide images. Powered by artificial intelligence, PathExplore1 spatially characterizes the TME with single-cell resolution, giving oncology drug developers the ability to unlock insights to inform the next phase of targeted oncology drug development.
The last decade has seen significant strides in oncology therapeutic development, but challenges remain – many cancer patients do not respond to available treatment, and many aren't eligible for potentially transformative therapies because of a lack of actionable insight into their disease. Researchers are looking to the tumor microenvironment, one of the most promising areas of oncology research, for answers and insights that will impact patient outcomes.
"PathExplore will enable researchers to identify novel spatial signatures predictive of outcomes," said Andy Beck, M.D., Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of PathAI. "We're hopeful that by giving oncology drug developers access to this level of detail and data from routine H&E samples, this next generation of pathology will drive advances in cancer therapy development."
Current technologies to measure and analyze the TME force researchers to make tradeoffs between resolution and scalability. Now with PathExplore, drug developers will have the ability to analyze the TME with deep resolution using a scalable platform that can be deployed on massive numbers of patient samples. PathExplore produces a panel of more than 600 quantitative HIFs: standardized and reproducible measures of counts, densities, areas and spatial relationships across cell types and tissue regions. PathExplore also generates overlay visualizations of cell types and tissue regions, delivered on PathAI's AISight™ Translational Research platform.
PathExplore has been trained using over 6.5 million pathologist annotations on 66,000 slides. It is currently available for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and renal cell carcinoma, with more indications planned to launch later this year, including ovarian and bladder cancers. The standardized, structured quantification of the TME across disease areas will enable reproducible, comparable, and scalable analysis across drug programs.
"PathExplore will shift the research paradigm, bypassing long standing constraints we experience with some of the existing multi-omics modalities and allowing for more open exploration and discovery of relationships that were not identifiable by human analysis alone," said Mike Montalto, PhD, chief scientific officer at PathAI. "The degree of granularity, speed, efficiency and scale delivers unmatched insights that will change the way we view the tumor microenvironment."
PathAI's HIFs have been used in over 15 scientific abstracts, presentations, and publications. To learn more about PathExplore, visit www.PathExplore.com or visit us at booth 315 at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) April 14th-19th in Orlando, FL.
About PathAI
PathAI is the only AI-focused technology company to provide comprehensive precision pathology solutions from wet lab services to algorithm deployment for clinical trials and diagnostic use. Rigorously trained and validated with data from more than 15 million annotations, its AI-powered models can be leveraged to optimize the analysis of patient samples to improve diagnostic efficiency and accuracy, as well as to better gauge therapeutic efficacy and accelerate drug development for complex diseases.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMA TECH
Businesswire | March 29, 2023
Simulations Plus, Inc. a leading provider of modeling and simulation software and services for pharmaceutical safety and efficacy, today announced that it established a strategic research collaboration with the Sino-American Cancer Foundation (SACF). This collaboration will leverage Simulations Plus’ staff and Artificial Intelligence-driven Drug Design technology in the ADMET Predictor® software platform to support the discovery and design of novel inhibitors of methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase 2 (MTHFD2), an emerging cancer target.
Per the terms of the collaboration, Simulations Plus will develop quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models for efficacy against MTHFD2, using information from SACF as well as academic and patent literature. The biologists, computational and medicinal chemists in the Early Drug Discovery Services team at Simulations Plus will work with the researchers at SACF to define the multi-objective parameters against which the lead molecule(s) will be optimized. The new AIDD Module in ADMET Predictor® will then be employed to generate libraries of virtual compounds that are optimized for potency and other chosen parameters. The teams will select promising candidates for synthesis and testing, and ensuing rounds of QSAR model building and AIDD optimization will be performed until the milestone criteria in the collaboration agreement are achieved.
“We value the trust and confidence SACF has in our team and AI technology to complement and accelerate conventional drug design and lead optimization processes,” said Dr. Jeremy Jones, Principal Scientist at Simulations Plus and project lead. “By combining their drug discovery expertise with our algorithmic and data science know-how, we are confident we will successfully support their hit-to-lead target development activities.”
As part of this agreement, SACF will provide upfront funding to Simulations Plus to design a set number of compounds for efficacy against MTHFD2 which will be exclusive to SACF. Subsequent milestone payments will be made as key research and development goals are met.
“SACF has had an active interest in AI for de novo design for some time, and we have found a trusted partner in Simulations Plus to help us integrate this into our research,” added Dr. Frank Luh, CEO of SACF. “Scientists from the two organizations will work side-by-side to combine SACF’s data with all that Simulations Plus offers to identify the next generation of compounds that could help in the treatment of cancer.”
John DiBella, SLP Division President, said, “The Early Drug Discovery Services offering at Simulations Plus is tailor made for this type of partnership, where our team of experts, including computational, medicinal, and cheminformatics specialists, provide end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery and optimization support to complement the SACF team. Simulations Plus continues to invite future collaborations which benefit organizations and, most importantly, the global communities we serve.”
About Simulations Plus, Inc.
Serving clients worldwide for more than 25 years, Simulations Plus is a leading provider in the biosimulation market providing software and consulting services supporting drug discovery, development, research, and regulatory submissions. We offer solutions that bridge machine learning, physiologically based pharmacokinetics, quantitative systems pharmacology/toxicology, and population PK/PD modeling approaches. Our technology is licensed and applied by major pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and regulatory agencies worldwide.
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VIEWS AND ANALYSIS
Businesswire | May 05, 2023
Harrow a leading U.S. eyecare pharmaceutical company, announced the completion of the transfer to Harrow of the New Drug Applications (NDAs) for ILEVRO® (nepafenac ophthalmic suspension) 0.3%, NEVANAC® (nepafenac ophthalmic suspension) 0.1%, and MAXIDEX® (dexamethasone ophthalmic suspension) 0.1%. These three FDA-approved ophthalmic medicines, which are now commercially available under the Harrow umbrella, were among the five products that Harrow purchased in January of 2023 and for which Harrow has been receiving net profits from unit sales during the NDA transfer process. Harrow expects to complete the transfer of the NDAs for the two remaining products, VIGAMOX® (moxifloxacin hydrochloride ophthalmic solution) 0.5% and TRIESENCE® 40 mg/ml, by year-end.
“We are delighted to have completed the NDA transfer process for ILEVRO, NEVANAC, and MAXIDEX earlier than our originally estimated six-month period,” said Mark L. Baum, Chief Executive Officer of Harrow. “We can now implement our market access, marketing, inventory management, and national sales detailing strategies for each of these three products, and we expect to extend those efforts when the NDAs for the remaining two products, VIGAMOX and TRIESENCE, are transferred later this year.
“Our market research has shown that the market need for all five of these products continues to increase with U.S. demographic growth and that there are few, if any, new competitive threats, particularly in the NSAID market. These products are used during procedures and within markets in which Harrow already has a strong foothold, and we look forward to making these well-known and valuable ophthalmic medicines available to the eyecare professionals that we serve nationwide as we continue to execute our branded ophthalmic pharmaceuticals market strategy.”
Product orders for ILEVRO, NEVANAC, and MAXIDEX can be made directly through Harrow’s dedicated customer service ordering partner, Cardinal’s Cordlogistics, which includes a wholesaler distribution system encompassing McKesson and AmerisourceBergen.
About Harrow
Harrow is a leading U.S. eyecare pharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative ophthalmic prescription therapies that are accessible and affordable. Harrow owns U.S. commercial rights to ten FDA-approved ophthalmic pharmaceutical products. Harrow also owns and operates ImprimisRx, the leading U.S. ophthalmic‑focused pharmaceutical compounding business, which also serves as a mail-order pharmacy licensed to ship prescription medications in all 50 states. Harrow has non-controlling equity positions in Surface Ophthalmics, Inc. and Melt Pharmaceuticals, Inc., companies that began as subsidiaries of Harrow. Harrow also owns royalty rights in four late-stage drug candidates being developed by Surface and Melt.
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