Quest Diagnostics and Paige are collaborating to use artificial intelligence to improve and speed the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases that rely on pathologic assessment.
The collaboration involves analysis using Paige’s proprietary machine learning expertise of pathology diagnostic data and digitized slides from Quest Diagnostics and its AmeriPath and Dermpath businesses to uncover markers of cancer and other diseases.
Using these insights, the parties intend to develop new software products which, following regulatory approval, will be marketed to pathologists, oncologists and other providers to support disease diagnosis.
Near term, the parties also intend to license the insights to biopharmaceutical and research organizations to aid biomarker discovery, drug research and development and companion diagnostics.
The collaboration will initially focus on solid tumor cancers, such as prostate, breast, colorectal and lung. The agreement involves shared revenue for achieving certain product and commercial milestones and, assuming regulatory approval, arrangements for Quest to use approved software products in its pathology operations as well as joint marketing and research. In addition, Quest’s pathologists will aid in defining pathology workflows for using the products to support diagnostic decision-making. Additional terms were not disclosed.
Quest and its specialty pathology businesses bring subspecialty expertise based largely from serving community cancer centers, which provide 80% of cancer care nationally, complementing insights from Paige’s academic center expertise.
AI-enabled computational pathology can identify known patterns in tissue that characterize disease as well as identify new markers, including those that are not necessarily detected by the naked eye. Because AI systems improve with exposure to new data, the data from Quest’s deep subspecialized expertise is poised to enhance Paige’s efforts to discern new insights that may improve cancer diagnosis and patient care.
