NantOmics, the leader in molecular diagnostics and a member of the NantWorks ecosystem of families, announced the completion of a Round A finance series for a leading on-demand digital pathology xompany, OptraSCAN.
The funding will support the acceleration of product line expansion and manufacturing of OptraSCAN Multispectral, Confocal and Frozen tissue whole slide imaging scanners, and machine vision based image analytics systems to further enable access to Digital Pathology.
NantOmics and NantWork's Augmented Intelligence platforms of unsupervised machine learning and machine vision will be integrated into the OptraSCAN pathology devices to establish state of the art intelligent pathology diagnostic tools in this era of immunotherapy in cancer, enabling the 2D and 3D identification of immune effector and suppressor cells.
This news is announced in conjunction with the 2016 Pathology Visions annual conference in San Diego, CA where attendees will have access to expert presenters, thought leaders and pioneers in digital pathology.
“We’re pleased to support and enable the expansion of OptraSCAN’s digital pathology platforms with our artificial intelligence platforms and this series of funding,” stated Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., founder and CEO of NantWorks and leader of the Cancer MoonShot 2020 program.
“These integrated solutions will have the potential to maximize quality, quantity and efficiency of pathology clinical capabilities and directly align with the Cancer MonnShot 2020 vision to accelerate next-generation personalized care for oncology patients.
“Combining OptraSCAN’s portfolio of digital tools with NantOmics and NantWorks platforms has the potential to be a game-changer for clinical scientists across the globe; we’re thrilled to be supporting the company’s ongoing ventures. Our aim is to integrate our whole genomics, transcriptomics and proteomic analysis (GPS Cancer) with this next generation pathology visualization machine enabling diagnosis of the immunome."
“We are honored and extremely delighted to welcome Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and NantOmics as a Series A investor in our On-Demand Digital Pathology company,” said Abhi Gholap, founder chairman of Optra Group of companies and CEO of OptraSCAN.
“Patrick’s goal of sharing information to advance cancer research and accelerate big science endeavors such as the Cancer MoonShot 2020 and QUILT program are in line with those of OptraSCAN, making this venture an ideal synergy between the two organizations. Our novel business model and innovative technology offerings are disrupting not only developed world markets, but also getting significant customer traction in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and South Africa.”
The OptraSCAN Digital Pathology platform and solutions are made easily accessible through OptraSCAN’s On-Demand system that provides instant access to digital pathology infrastructure through an affordable, monthly subscription, and placement of a small footprint WSI scanner at the pathologist’s lab, at no additional costs.
These multispectral scanners handle up to 300 slides of scanning, storage and analytics. Easy-to-use solutions for managing, archiving, sharing, storing and analyzing slide images are made available On-Premise or via Cloud-hosting for all stakeholders involved in the utilization of digital pathology images.
OptraSCAN for research-use-only, is the first On-Demand Digital Pathology System to provide a comprehensive, affordable end-to-end Digital Pathology solution for both low and high throughput users.
OptraSCAN serves as a perfect tool for the transition from conventional microscopy to Digital Pathology for the effective acquisition of Whole Slide images, viewing, sharing, analysis and management of digital slides and associated metadata.