SECAUCUS, N.J. and NEW YORK, May 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Quest Diagnostics (NYSE:DGX) and Paige today announced a collaboration designed to unlock the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve and speed the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases that rely on pathologic assessment.

The collaboration involves analysis using Paige's proprietary machine learning expertise of pathology diagnostic data and digitized slides from Quest Diagnostics and its AmeriPath and Dermpath businesses to uncover markers of cancer and other diseases. Using these insights, the parties intend to develop new software products which, following regulatory approval, will be marketed to pathologists, oncologists and other providers to support disease diagnosis. Near term, the parties also intend to license the insights to biopharmaceutical and research organizations to aid biomarker discovery, drug research and development and companion diagnostics.

The collaboration will initially focus on solid tumor cancers, such as prostate, breast, colorectal and lung. The agreement involves shared revenue for achieving certain product and commercial milestones and, assuming regulatory approval, arrangements for Quest to use approved software products in its pathology operations as well as joint marketing and research. In addition, Quest's pathologists will aid in defining pathology workflows for using the products to support diagnostic decision-making. Additional terms were not disclosed.
"As the leader in advanced diagnostics, we are excited to actively participate in the creation and use of new technologies that further the mission to make precision medicine clinically accessible, actionable and economical. We are energized about contributing our expertise to Paige's computational pathology leadership to deliver insights from leading-edge technologies to improve the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases," said Kristie Dolan, General Manager, Oncology Franchise, Quest Diagnostics.

The collaboration combines Quest's leadership in advanced diagnostics, pathology subspecialty expertise and national scale with Paige's leading AI-based software capabilities and proprietary data from millions of digitized pathology slides and associated therapy information. Quest and its specialty pathology businesses bring subspecialty expertise based largely from serving community cancer centers, which provide 80% of cancer care nationally, complementing insights from Paige's academic center expertise.

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