Life Sciences   Cell-based Assays   Tissue-based Drug Discovery   Tissue-based Diagnostics Medical Imaging

Breast tumor specimen with extracted individual cells and detected nuclei, cytoplasm and membrane on a cell-by-cell basis... Images courtesy of Dako Cytomation

Tissue-based Diagnostics / Histopathology

The development of new 'personalized' therapies depends on the identification of appropriate biomarkers. These biomarkers play an increasing role in drug development and treatment as a way of stratifying patients - identifying those individuals with higher and lower response rates and those that experience greater and lesser side effects.

The interest in biomarkers, especially multiplexing biomarkers, in tissue-based studies has created a growing demand for automated methods that quantify biomarker expression in images, particularly in the context of certain microanatomical units. To date, however, the reliable automated extraction of structural units in tissue has proved too difficult a task. Automated detection systems currently on the market often use methods of estimation that are unreliable. The only way to achieve true accuracy is to extract the morphological entities, which they usually cannot do.

With Definiens you can develop applications that identify relevant morphological entities automatically and so give precise, repeatable results. The technology can handle all types of stains or tests including protein expression (IHC, fluorescence, quantum dots) or gene probes (FISH, SISH).

Definiens opens new avenues in tissue-based diagnostics. Multiplexing enables researches to undertake a variety of tests on the same morphological units – the holy grail of tissue-based diagnostics. The relationship between different biomarkers can be explored and correlated with clinical and/or molecular data, facilitating a far more nuanced understanding of disease progression and personalized treatment. 

Download the poster “Detailed quantification of biomarker expression in the context of relevant morphological units”.

		What's wrong with biomarkers? The hype around biomarkers has reached such a fever pitch that it risks provoking a backlash among needed constituencies such as payers, physicians, and patients. No one doubts biomarkers’ long-term value, but many obstacles remain, and that time still seems distant. Read this in-depth analysis in which distinguished experts examine biomarker challenges and follow along as they: Identify the need for change in research and clinical trial strategies Concede biology is more complicated than first expected Explore barriers to physician adoption of biomarkers Review assay technology and sample access limitations Examine nascent efforts to develop needed standards Discuss some notable biomarker failures and their lingering impact Tackle thorny commercialization issue holding back biomarkers

Please download the whitepaper "What's Wrong with Biomarkers?" featuring Klaus Lindpaintner, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Steven Gutman, University of Central Florida, Rahul Mitra, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, David Wholley, The Biomarkers Consortium and Peter Duncan, Definiens AG.