Definiens’ Symposium Finds Tissue Context of Tumor is Key to Cancer Immunotherapy Success

MUNICH, GERMANY - May 10, 2016 - Definiens, the pioneer in Tissue Phenomics® solutions for diagnostics development, has announced findings from the International Symposium, a sold-out gathering of international researchers and clinicians on April 27-28 in Boston, Massachusetts to discuss advancements in oncology and the application of Tissue Phenomics. Researchers from leading institutions such as the NIH, University of St. Andrews, Harvard, and NCT-Heidelberg joined oncology thought leaders from Merck, AstraZeneca, and IBM to discuss the future of cancer diagnostics and therapies. Presentations included topics such as using big data from tissue to solve complex tissue diagnostic problems, development of PDL-1 based signatures to drive therapy decisions, and the latest thinking on the immune contexture in cancer tissue.

“Tissue has always been the gold standard for cancer diagnosis and the presentations on immunotherapy really underscored that image analysis is essential to understanding the spatial resolution of immune cells within the tumor environment and clinically meaningful cell-to-cell communication,” commented Ralf Huss, Chief Medical Officer of Definiens. “Although genomics has shown a lot of disease correlation, the data on causation and the clinical utility has lagged.  Particularly for oncology, we know that genomics alone is not enough.”

Highlights of the conference included new predictive signatures for cancer therapies and patient stratification, strategies to implement digital pathology for reduction of diagnosis error, and approaches to correlation of genomics, phenomics, and proteomics for biomarker development.

Data from Definiens was also presented showing mining of tissue data to optimize predictive diagnostics for prostate cancer. This data showed a promising method to stratify patients that fell into the grey zone of Gleeson scoring, enabling oncologists to make a clearer decision on prostatectomy.

“I am very excited to unveil the results of our latest advancements using Cognition Network Technology®” added Gerd Binnig, Nobel Laureate and founder of Definiens. “While we have primarily presented our work on a prostate test, we have found that across multiple indications, the ability to datafy tissue features and then correlate with clinical outcome data provides a fungible way to optimize stratification for predictive value, population prevalence, or clinical trial protocol. This will be essential for future companion diagnostics and therapy selection panels.”

Next year’s conference will be held in Amsterdam, Netherlands on April 25-26, 2017 and will focus on advances in immuno-therapy, tissue-based diagnostics to match patients to therapies, and the integration of -omics data for clinical outcome predictions.  More information can be found at www.definiens.com.

About Definiens

Definiens is the pioneering provider of Tissue Phenomics® solutions for biomarker and companion diagnostics development and commercialization. Definiens’ technology empowers smarter tissue-based diagnostics by leveraging quantitative tissue readouts and other big data sources. By enabling the development of powerful and precise assays for patient stratification and clinical trial enrollment, Definiens aims to dramatically improve patient outcomes. Definiens' Tissue Phenomics approach was awarded the 2013 Frost and Sullivan Company of the Year Award for Global Tissue Diagnostics and Pathology Imaging. For more information, please visit: www.definiens.com.

Media Contact:

Affect
Jonathan Moll
+1 212 398 9680
jmoll(at)affect.com