Project Santa Fe Foundation and Virchow Medical Announce First-of-Its-Kind Partnership to Advance Proactive Analytics in Clinical Laboratory Medicine

Two organizations to collaborate in expanding longitudinal evidence-based cancer therapy to more patients

SALT LAKE CITY & LA JOLLA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Biopsy–The Project Santa Fe Foundation (PSFF) and Virchow Medical have formed a partnership to meet the unmet needs of oncology patients by transforming laboratory insights into proactive clinical analytics. This partnership will leverage unique assets—Virchow’s Crow’s Nest® Biopsy Catchment System and the Virchow Vault Liquid Specimen Biorepository—to increase the yield of high-quality biospecimens.

In so doing, Virchow Medical joins the PSFF-led Clinical Lab 2.0 movement, a global partnership dedicated to transforming the practice of medicine from a reactive model that treats illness as the starting point to a proactive, predictive model focused on human health. Alongside clinical lab data, pathology images, and medical text, Virchow’s unique assets will enhance the utility and delivery of longitudinal, evidence-based cancer therapy. To operationalize these strategies in the real-world healthcare environment, the PSFF co-founded the Diagnostic Medicine Consortium (DMC) with the Association of Pathology Informatics.

The partnership calls for:

• De-Identified Data augmentation: DMC is building a patient consent-driven data resource infrastructure that aims to more fully realize the predictive value of laboratory diagnostics, including existing biomarkers for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, and access to digital pathology assets. In a high-trust and regulatory-compliant fashion, this infrastructure will power the development of AI algorithms that are appropriately validated for the intended patient populations.
  Concordantly, Virchow is building a novel biospecimen infrastructure from liquid specimens sourced from cells on used biopsy needles that would otherwise have been medical waste. This dislodged tumor cell source can drive high quality oncology diagnostics, enhancing what is currently available through standard methods. By partnering, Virchow and DMC will be able to offer providers and researchers a greater array of de-identified tumor-causing mutations with associated meta data than either entity could offer alone.
• Advanced algorithmics, including AI algorithm development: DMC’s algorithmic infrastructure includes dozens of heuristics useful for cost avoidance, early diagnosis, causal attribution, and multimodal data analysis. These assets amplify the dual-sourced, de-identified datasets Virchow Medical brings, augmenting training input for AI algorithms to suggest candidates as part of targeted therapy product development pipelines.
• Regulatory Collaboration: DMC will then provide governance, stewardship, and ethical framework for legitimate clinical and scientific use of the Virchow Vault both for approval of novel AI-driven diagnostics, and for their deployment.
• Educational Programs: Developing training and outreach initiatives to disseminate knowledge about predictive analytics and best practices, along with academic education for future pathology and clinical laboratory science in the concept of diagnostic health and the techniques for making use of all the cellular resources that are already being extracted from patients undergoing biopsies.

“The Diagnostic Medicine Consortium embodies a steadfast commitment to innovation, early intervention, and prevention,” said Khosrow Shotorbani, CEO of Clinical Lab 2.0 and DMC. “By partnering with Virchow Medical, we leverage the power of longitudinal data. The two organizations together are poised to pave the way for a more integrated and effective healthcare system that enhances patient health outcomes.”

“This partnership with Virchow Medical meets key objectives of DMC, including maximizing the value of diagnostic procedures, and creating a high-quality biorepository and data asset for discovery,” said James M. Crawford, MD, PhD, chair of the boards of PSFF and DMC. “Virchow’s Crow’s Nest Biopsy Catchment System is an innovative and important tool because it creates a way to make routine something we could have been doing all along – making use of all the tumor cells from a core needle biopsy to reduce the incidence of sample insufficiency.”

“Proactive analytics are core to the missions of both the DMC and Virchow Medical,” said Alexander Arrow, MD, CEO of Virchow Medical, Inc. “We welcome the regulatory expertise that the DMC will bring to Virchow, as well as the improved service and expanded offering we will be able to offer to our customers as a result of this partnership, which ultimately, serves the purpose of reducing false negatives and improving cancer care.”

About Clinical Lab 2.0

Project Santa Fe Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit entity, serving as a coalition of laboratory leaders, coming together to create a disruptive value paradigm that expands the role of diagnostic services in the future healthcare ecosystem through informatic expertise. By leveraging laboratory medicine and pathology domain knowledge across the industry, PSFF aims to establish the evidence and standards for Clinical Lab 2.0. This includes facilitating diverse collaborations in order guide policies, transfer knowledge and accelerate the Clinical Lab 2.0 movement across the health care industry. For further information, visit https://cl2lab.org/about/.

About Diagnostic Medicine Consortium

The Diagnostic Medicine Consortium (DMC) is an operational arm of the Clinical Lab 2.0 movement. DMC’s core foci are multimodal data analysis, genomics, (neurosymbolic) AI, and advanced analysis of healthcare econometrics. With these focal points, DMC aims to maximizing and standardizing the predictive value of actionable information generated by the diagnostic sector, so as to promote the proactive delivery of health care for individuals and populations. Ultimately, goal is to shift from traditional reactive confirmation of disease conditions to proactive prevention of disease through longitudinal data stewardship and analytics. The DMC will also address maximizing the use of diagnostic information during episodes of acute illnesses. For further information, visit https://cl2lab.org/library/diagnostic-medicine-consortium-announced/.

About Virchow Medical, Inc.

Formerly known as Corramedical, Inc., Virchow’s mission is to unlock critical molecular data for every cancer patient and enable precision medicine to save more lives. It does this by providing clinicians with the Crow’s Nest® Biopsy Catchment System, a tool designed to provide every biopsy patient the opportunity to be treated with precision medicine targeted therapy without the use of the patient’s tissue block. Physicians using the device after biopsy procedures make Liquid Companion Specimens (LCSs) from material that would have otherwise been wasted. The LCSs are stored in a novel biorepository, the Virchow Vault, to make them available for diagnostic testing any time after the biopsy. The company exists to enable healthcare providers and clinical laboratories to make use of all the cellular resources extracted from biopsy patients without exhausting the core tissue. For further information, visit www.virchowmed.com, and follow Virchow on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/virchowmed/.

Virchow Medical is an EvoNexus portfolio company.

Crow’s Nest^®, Virchow Vault, Biopsy Catchment, Cell Wrangler, MOOS, Precision Can’t Waste, Sample Better, The Waste is Over, One Biopsy, Many Answers, and Biopsy Specimen Stewardship are trademarks of Virchow Medical, f/k/a Corramedical, Inc.

Contacts

Press contacts:

Project Santa Fe Foundation, Diagnostic Medicine Consortium and Clinical Lab 2.0

Jill Pierce
Project Santa Fe Foundation
415-302-7882
[e-mail]

Virchow Medical, Inc.

Carolyn Holck
Virchow Medical, Inc.
9191 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 150
La Jolla, CA 92122
+1-833-4-BIOPSY
[e-mail]