Konica Minolta Accelerates Expansion of Precision Medicine Bus. Through Acquisition of US-based Pharmaceutical Research Compa...
2017年9月25日 - 03:00PM
ビジネスワイヤ(英語)
Through molecular digital imaging
technology, acquisition offers new value for drug discovery and
development focused on the fields of immuno-oncology and
neurodegenerative disease
Konica Minolta, Inc. (“Konica Minolta”) (TOKYO: 4902; ISIN:
JP3300600008) and Boston-based Invicro LLC (“Invicro”) today
announced that they have concluded an agreement whereby Konica
Minolta will acquire Invicro, a leading provider of imaging
services and software for research and drug development.
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Invicro is a global Contract Research Organization (CRO)
providing imaging services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology
industry from early phase discovery through late-phase clinical
trials. Invicro built these services on a software and analytics
platform enabling streamlined large-scale data analytics across any
quantitative biomarker readout.
This is another move by Konica Minolta to accelerate development
of its exciting new medical platform to advance precision medicine,
discover new therapeutic targets and develop new technologies and
therapeutics. Earlier this summer Konica Minolta announced an
agreement to purchase genetic testing and analysis company Ambry
Genetics Corporation (“Ambry”). Precision medicine is an emerging
approach to healthcare where genetic or molecular analysis is used
to match patients with the most appropriate treatment for their
specific disease. Precision medicine aims to improve a patients’
quality of life and save the healthcare system money by eliminating
unnecessary and ineffective treatments, as well as assist
pharmaceutical companies lower the cost and time involved in drug
discovery.
“We are a quantitative biomarker company. Whether in medical
imaging or digital pathology, we seek to distill complex biological
measurements into straightforward decision criteria at each stage
of pharmaceutical development,” said Dr. Jack Hoppin, Co-Founder
and CEO of Invicro. “Konica Minolta is the ideal partner to
accelerate the impact of the informatics platform we have developed
and deployed over the past decade. The prospect of working with
Konica Minolta and their recently acquired Ambry team on the
translation of precision medicine innovations from research trials
to clinical offerings is truly inspiring. We’re excited to be a
part of the new disruption in the industry being assembled by
Konica Minolta.”
“Invicro and Konica Minolta have some of the most powerful
digital imaging and data management tools available to biomedical
researchers and clinicians,” said Kunihiro Koshizuka, Senior
Executive Officer, CTO, Konica Minolta, Inc. “The combination of
our tools and expertise creates unparalleled cutting-edge
capabilities that we believe are unmatched in the business. While
research and development expenses are increasing, the number of
medicines approved for use is slow and improving the productivity
of new drug development is an important issue for the
pharmaceutical industry. We look to offer cost-effective solutions
to these problems that pharmaceutical companies face through this
new platform.”
No changes will be made to Invicro’s management structure, and
Dr. Hoppin will remain on as CEO. Invicro’s business operations
will continue as usual, including maintaining current staff and
facilities as well as the same unwavering commitment to excellent
service and scientific collaboration for sponsors while expanding
the firm’s translational offering in medical imaging to pathology
and genomics by joining Konica Minolta’s precision medicine
platform.
Making R&D More Efficient with Imaging
Technologies
Identifying effective biomarkers of disease using imaging
technology should accelerate drug discovery innovations by
increasing the efficiency of pharmacological testing. Other
prospective benefits of precision medicine are more accurate
predictions of drug efficacy in clinical trials and more efficient
drug development through shorter and smaller clinical trials. In
recent years, digital imaging technology at the molecular scale has
enabled visualization of potential medicines interacting with
cells, helping pharmaceutical companies meet their growing need to
measure efficacy through advanced image analysis data and create
new surrogate endpoints for use during clinical trials. It is
during this process that Invicro streamlines drug R&D by
accurately inspecting, analyzing, and diagnosing data-rich images.
Invicro has amassed a solid record and customer base with its
high-value-added image processing, analyses and diagnostic
services, primarily for the drug discovery screening and clinical
trial programs of global pharmaceutical companies. The firm
leverages artificial intelligence for its proprietary image
processing and analysis techniques, and maintains a cloud-based
data storage solution that manages huge volumes of information.
Konica Minolta maintains a range of vital bio-healthcare
technologies for advanced drug discovery and clinical trials,
including proprietary pathology offering High-Sensitivity Tissue
Testing (HSTT)1. The company looks to draw on Invicro's strong
connections among global pharmaceutical companies to supply them
with applications for HSTT, together with Ambry's genetic
diagnostics technologies, that will help to shorten R&D lead
times and accelerate pharmaceutical development efforts.
HSTT is a proprietary technique that can accurately measure the
location and quantity of proteins to optimize treatment with
molecularly-targeted drugs. It offers far greater precision and
accuracy than conventional immunostaining techniques. HSTT can
provide an early-stage, highly precise diagnosis and insights into
a patient’s disease that can inform research and clinicians’
treatment plans.
“The combination of medical imaging, genomics and breakthrough
HSTT is a disruptive capability relevant to all disease indications
with initial opportunities in the Immuno-Oncology space,” added Dr.
Hoppin. “The analytics and machine-learning teams at Invicro are
excited about partnering with processing teams at Konica Minolta
and Ambry to form a global informatics offering aimed at
accelerating the value proposition of HSTT and other precision
medicine technologies over the next decade.”
1 A portion of research on HSTT was commissioned under a project
by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development
Organization (NEDO), Japan.
About Invicro
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Invicro LLC
(“Invicro”) was founded in 2008 with the mission of improving the
role and function of imaging in drug discovery and development
across all therapeutic areas. Invicro’s team of 200+
researchers include more than 60 PhDs and MDs across a broad array
of scientific and engineering disciplines. Originally focused
on imaging in the discovery phase, Invicro expanded its offering in
clinical phase research with the acquisition of Molecular
Neuroimaging, LLC in 2016 and Imanova Ltd. in 2017. Invicro
develops and leverages the latest approaches in quantitative
biomarker research. The successful integration of the discovery and
clinical teams onto Invicro’s industry-leading software informatics
platforms, VivoQuant® and iPACS®, has inspired a strong and growing
presence in the market. Invicro estimates revenue of $106 million
and Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization
(EBITDA) of $17 million for fiscal 2018. For more information,
visit: www.invicro.com.
About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) is a global digital
technology company with core strengths in imaging and data
analysis, optics, materials, and nano-fabrication. Through
innovation, we create products and digital solutions for the
betterment of business and society—today and for generations to
come. Across our Business Technologies, Healthcare, and
Industrial-facing businesses, we aspire to be an Integral Value
Provider that applies the full range of our company’s expertise to
offer comprehensive solutions to our customer’s most pressing
problems, work with our partners to ensure our solutions are
sustainable, anticipate and address tomorrow’s issues, and tailor
each solution to meet the unique and specific needs of our valued
customers. Leveraging these capabilities, Konica Minolta
contributes to productivity improvement and workflow change for our
customers, and provides leading-edge service solutions in the IoT
era. Headquartered in Tokyo and with operations in more than 50
countries, Konica Minolta has more than 43,000 employees serving
approximately two million customers in over 150 countries. Konica
Minolta is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, (TOKYO:4902). For
further information, visit: https://www.konicaminolta.com/
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For media inquiries, please contact:Konica Minolta,
Inc.Corporate Communications
Dept.+81-3-6250-2100press@konicaminolta.comorInvicro LLCKat Ramey,
+1 617.904.2117Sr. Marketing Managerkramey@invicro.com