Direct-to-Digital Read Pathology Pioneer Welcomes Veteran Breast Health Clinician and Professor to Renowned Team of Pathology Leaders
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Histolix, a leading developer of direct-to-digital read pathology solutions, today announced the appointment of Jane Elizabeth Brock, MBBS, Ph.D. to the company's board of directors. Brock brings more than 20 years of experience in pathology and is a specialist in diagnostic breast oncology. She is currently the chief of Breast Pathology Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and associate professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.
"We are extremely honored to add Dr. Brock to the Histolix professional team," said Rob Royea, president and CEO, Histolix. "Her vast background in pathology will help our ongoing endeavors to streamline histology procedures, helping shorten diagnostic pathology procedure outcomes from days to minutes. She brings a wealth of knowledge to our highly esteemed clinical team currently working on this revolutionary digital pathology solution."
Brock earned her medical degree and Ph.D. at the University College London School of Medicine. She completed her residency in Anatomic Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
An interest in global health has led Brock to seek out and speak nationally and internationally about technologies capable of transforming cost-prohibitive, highly skilled cancer diagnostic workflows into those useful in low-resource countries, without compromising quality. Her academic endeavors within the well-known Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Breast Program have included working on multiple phase II clinical trials and undertaking collaborative research with surgeons and oncologists on pertinent breast cancer management issues. She also has been involved with the Global Breast Cancer Initiative, part of the World Health Organization, writing technical documents for the ministries of health in breast cancer diagnostic pathways. She has worked with multiple City Cancer Challenge (C/CAN) cities to unite, advise, and train local stakeholders in their healthcare response to cancer, specifically with respect to laboratory quality management, breast cancer diagnostics and inter-disciplinary cancer care.
The founders of Histolix recently received $3.2 million funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for further evaluation of its Giga Fluorescence Imitating Brightfield Imaging (FIBI). The team's focus is on rapid high quality digital histologic imaging of freshly excised breast lumpectomies to enable pathologists to provide intraoperative guidance to the breast surgeon.
The development effort of this revolutionary new histological methodology is being led by renowned University of California, Davis (UCD) experts Richard Levenson, MD, chief science officer, and Farzad Fereidouni, Ph.D., chief technology officer. In addition to Fereidouni and Levenson, the investigative team is comprised of leading healthcare researchers, Alexander "Sandy" Borowsky, MD; Candice Sauder, MD and Diana Miglioretti, PhD. The latest grant brings the total of funding awarded to the Histolix founding team to $9 million from the NCI and National Institute of Health (NIH) over the past 12 months.
"I look forward to joining Histolix and what the NCI has referenced as one of the best investigative teams in the country to attempt such an effort," said Brock. "It is exciting to become a part of this breakthrough technology. The impact to patient care, radically updating, simplifying, and expediting the anatomic pathology diagnostic pathway, could be very significant and a game changer in diagnostic logistics."
Digital Pathology (DP) has been FDA approved for several years, but has had disappointing adoption (under 10 percent). Current DP still requires slides to be made, not improving on historical labor-intensive, costly processes, and only then can DP be introduced to digitize the whole slide image. Histolix eliminates virtually all of the historic process and time constraints by creating a digital image without the slide at the point-of-care.
"The overall global pathology market is immense and is expected to have a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.1 percent from 2023-2032, resulting in a total of $114.5 billion in 2032," said Royea. "The Histolix team is extremely well qualified to enable the next generation pathology solutions and ensure excellence in patient care."
About Histolix
Histolix patented technology provides a new intrinsically digital slide-free histopathology solution that is deployable in both pathology labs as well as clinician-focused point-of-care settings, eliminating delays from current pathology workflow. Supported by millions in grant and private funding with three years of development completed, Histolix has licensed its patented "direct read" technology from University of California, Davis. In coordination with the founding team, Histolix recently concluded a 100-tissue sample equivalency validation study across multiple tissue types, resulting in no major discordance with conventional FFPE pathology standards. For further information, visit www.histolix.com.
Media Contact
Laurie Hallwyler, Histolix, 1 6502489081, [email protected], www.histolix.com
SOURCE Histolix
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