Supporting the Development of New Diagnostic Biomarkers

One of the biggest challenges in healthcare today is how to improve patient treatment response. When patient response rates are less than optimal, is it the drug, the diagnostic, or just a poor biological understanding that is to blame?

Definiens provides answers to these questions by promoting better understanding of the biological factors, and through this, more accurate diagnostics leading to better treatment response rates. This is achieved by promoting a ‘systems view’ of the biology within human tissue. This approach can assist the pathologist by quantifying histological structures or biomarkers which would be challenging, if not impossible to quantify using conventional approaches. These tissue-based attributes can then be correlated with clinical endpoints to better understand what drives response rates, and thereby stimulate the development of next-generation diagnostics. Research has shown that such a comprehensive approach is vastly superior to univariate, qualitative approaches in achieving more accurate patient stratification.

Definiens’ digital pathology image analysis is currently being utilized in various clinical diagnostic settings and is producing encouraging results for sufferers of breast and prostate cancer.