NEW YORK – Caris Life Sciences and Pramana said Friday they have signed a multiyear deal for Pramana to digitize about 1.5 million pathology slide specimens per year for use with Caris' artificial intelligence-developed software to support treatment decisions and clinical trial recruitment.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Pramana will use its Spectral scanners and Intelligent Acquisition image recognition software to provide digital scans of pathology specimens in support of Irving, Texas-based Caris' digital pathology business. Matthew Oberley, Caris' senior vice president and executive medical director, said in a statement the deal followed a successful pilot program and his company anticipates working with Pramana on prospective and archival slide digitization.
"The ability to enrich whole-slide images with valuable metadata and software tools that allows for the rapid and intuitive visualization about the specimen will significantly streamline our workflows and AI capabilities in support of clinical patient care and help advance the next wave of oncology therapeutics through our partnerships with biopharma," he said.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Prasanth Perugupalli, Pramana's chief product officer, added that his firm's products not only passed clinical validation during the prior collaboration with Caris but also achieved a near-zero rejection rate for whole-slide images.
"In addition, we have jointly created a new industry best benchmark for 'no tissue left behind,' ideally suited for molecular pathology labs, as it ensures complete replication of the physical slide including tiny tissue fragments located in the farthest corners of a glass slide," he said.
Caris said it is combining AI- and machine learning-developed algorithms, a database of clinical genomic data, and DNA, RNA, and proteomic profiling to develop next-generation precision medicine tools.