PreciseDx Announces New Collaboration with Laboratory of Pathology at Dordrecht Albert Schweitzer Hospital

Leading Hospital to Study Performance of the PreciseDx Breast Test as an Aid in the Treatment Decision Process

NEW YORK, November 29, 2022  PreciseDx, a leading AI company leveraging the analysis of morphology features from histology slides to provide more precise patient-specific risk information, today announced a collaboration with the Laboratory of Pathology at Dordrecht, Netherlands. The laboratory is responsible for the pathology of both the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Dordrecht and the Beatrix Hospital in Gorinchem, both in the Netherlands. Through this agreement, the Laboratory of Pathology will study the performance of PreciseDx’s AI-driven Cancer Risk Stratification platform, confirming its accuracy of staging and role in the decision process. 

In early-stage invasive breast cancer, clinical and pathological features are used to assess prognosis. Of these, grade is known to be subject to considerable inter- and -intra-observer variation. This has been confirmed in a recent study from the Netherlands1. Designed to augment the work pathologists perform, not replace it, the PreciseDx Breast Test has previously shown a more accurate assessment of prognosis than current clinical features2 and can address the issue of breast cancer diagnostic misclassification3. 

The PreciseDx Breast Assay has been shown to function as a standalone prognostic assay capable of accurately stratifying early-stage invasive breast cancer into low risk and high-risk likelihood of recurrence within 6 years of primary diagnosis. Furthermore, the assay is capable of reclassifying breast cancer histologic grades 2 and 3 into low-risk and high-risk categories.

The collaboration will integrate PreciseDx’s AI-enabled technology into an independent cohort of early-stage breast cancer cases with known six-year clinical outcomes. In an initial rollout, PreciseDx’s technology will review and evaluate 300 digitally scanned hematoxylin and eosin (H and E) images from patients in the Laboratory of Pathology at Dordrecht with early-stage invasive ductal and mixed ductal/lobular breast cancer defined by ER(+), PR+/-, HER2(-) status. 

“The collaboration with Dr. Westenend will provide the opportunity to evaluate the prognostic performance of the assay with an independent European breast cancer cohort. In addition to the prognostic utility of predicting the likelihood of recurrence, this collaboration will also permit a comparison of the PreciseDx Breast assay with the prognostic performance of other available diagnostic tests in the identification of patients with low-risk and high-risk of disease recurrence.  Finally, the collaboration will allow an evaluation of the PreciseDx assay within the context of current pathology workflow within Dr. Westenend laboratory practice,” said Douglas P. Malinowski, Ph.D., Vice President of Clinical Affairs at PreciseDx.

“At our facility we are always seeking new ways to advance clinical care, so we are thrilled to collaborate with PreciseDx, an organization with the technology to improve processes for pathologists and oncologists and change outcomes for patients,” said Pieter J Westenend, MD, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and practicing pathologist at the Laboratory of Pathology at Dordrecht. “PreciseDx is a unique and ideal partner that stands out in its ease of integration. The PreciseDx report turn-around time takes only a few days, proving to be an excellent and encouraging tool for prognostic analysis.”

“We are excited to validate our technology at one of the most prestigious healthcare facilities in the Netherlands,” said PreciseDx CEO and President, Wayne Brinster. “The Laboratory of Pathology at Dordrecht and the affiliated hospitals share our forward-thinking, patient-centric approach to improving the long-term outlook and quality of life for patients with early-stage breast cancer. In addition, the collaboration will permit an assessment of the prognostic utility of the PreciseDx breast assay in comparison to other methods.”

PreciseDx Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Gerardo Fernandez, MD, added, “This collaboration opens the door for larger, prospectively designed retrospective analyses looking at predictive and prognostic approaches to treating breast cancer. We look forward to being able to announce additional innovative collaborations of this type in the near future.”

About PreciseDx

PreciseDx is a leading AI company leveraging the analysis of morphology features from histology slides to provide more precise patient-specific risk information. PreciseDx’s Morphology Feature Array™ allows clinical teams to have access to unmatched insights and accurate, actionable intelligence for disease state characterization to determine the best treatment for each patient. Combining the power of artificial intelligence with its proprietary Morphology Feature Array™, PreciseDx creates disease-specific assays that deliver new levels of pathology information and insight on each patient’s risk profile and likely outcomes to aid in treatment decision-making. To learn more about PreciseDx, visit https://precisedx.ai/

 

Sources

1 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30977119/

2 Prastawa, Marcel, et al. “Development of Novel Automated Grade and Survival Prediction of Breast Cancer Patients Using Machine Learning and AI Algorithms Applied to H&E Images in TCGA Dataset.” San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2019.

3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25781441/