Lunit, a medical artificial intelligence (AI) company, is partnering with U.S. precision medicine company Discovery Life Sciences to support drug development by global pharmaceutical companies. The companies plan to combine Discovery’s biospecimen and biomolecular analysis capabilities with Lunit’s AI-powered pathology technology to provide tissue analysis data needed for drug development.
Lunit said on the 12th that it had signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Discovery Life Sciences.
Headquartered in Alabama, Discovery provides services needed for drug development, ranging from biospecimen procurement to molecular pathology, genomic and proteomic analysis. According to the company, it has supported more than 2,000 clinical trial programs to date and is currently supporting more than 350.
Under the partnership, Discovery will use Lunit SCOPE, Lunit’s biomarker analysis platform, for biomarker and tissue analysis projects commissioned by global pharmaceutical companies. The companies plan to provide AI-powered pathology analysis services tailored to customer needs and expand their applications throughout the drug development process.
Biomarkers are biological indicators used to assess disease characteristics and treatment responses. They can help researchers identify patient subgroups and predict treatment efficacy during drug development, making consistent tissue sample analysis and reliable quantitative data important.
Lunit will also participate in Discovery’s “B4 Tour” event in South San Francisco on the 14th. Lunit Medical Director Lim Yu-ju will present during an expert session and join a panel discussion on “The Present and Future of AI Biomarkers.” The company plans to introduce Lunit SCOPE to representatives of global pharmaceutical companies and researchers.
“Demand is growing for quantitative and reproducible biomarker discovery, making AI-powered pathology analysis increasingly important,” Lunit CEO Seo Beom-seok said. “Our collaboration with Discovery will enable more global companies and researchers to use Lunit SCOPE in developing therapies.”
“Success in AI-powered pathology analysis depends on consistency in tissue samples and their processing,” said Anna Juncker-Jensen, vice president of scientific affairs at Discovery. “With in-house laboratories capable of handling everything from biospecimen procurement and tissue processing to pathology analysis, we will provide our partners with reliable data.”
Meanwhile, Lunit is already using Lunit SCOPE in pharmaceutical companies’ drug development and clinical trials. Its research includes using AI to analyze information that is difficult to quantify manually, such as the distribution of immune cells within tumor tissue, to predict responses to treatments including immuno-oncology drugs.
Lunit SCOPE is a platform that uses AI to analyze pathology images of cancer tissue and identify characteristics of tumors and surrounding immune cells. Unlike diagnostic imaging AI, which primarily detects the presence of cancer, the platform is designed to help predict whether a patient is likely to respond to a specific treatment and identify biomarkers needed for drug development.