Invicro

The Invicro company founded in 2008 is located in Massachusetts, the USA and specializes in rendering services in the field of medical visualization and software development for creation of new medicines. Among clients of Invicro there are more than 140 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including from Japan (data for September, 2017).

Activities

Invicro is the contract research organization (CRO) which provides services of diagnostic imaging for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that is demanded at all stages of development of medicines – from initial search of active agents before clinical trials of late phases. Invicro services are based on a software and analytical platform which provides the optimized analysis of large volumes of the biomarkers given according to any quantity characteristics.

Performance Indicators

According to forecasts of Invicro, in 2018 financial year operating profit of the company will be $17 million, and revenue will reach $106 million.

2017: Konica Minolta buys Invicro

On September 25, 2017 the Konica Minolta company announced purchase for 32 billion yens ($285 million) of the American startup of Invicro, Nikkei reports.^[1]

Konica Minolta buys service provider in the field of medical visualization of Invicro

The transaction with Invicro was closed in November, 2017 and full-scale entry of Konica Minolta into the market of services for the companies occupied with development of pharmpreparart marks. It is supposed that combining developments of Invicro with own High-Sensitivity Tissue Testing (HSTT) technology which is used for identification and correction of treatment of oncological diseases, Konica Minolta will be able to give more detailed efficiency evaluation of drugs.

Accession to Konica Minolta will allow Invicro to develop technologies of digital molecular visualization for search and development of medicines for an immunotherapy of oncological diseases and also medicines for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Invicro acquisition – one more step of Konica Minolta towards development of own medical platform using which the company is going to develop exact medicine, to look for new therapeutic targets, to develop the innovative technologies and methods of treatment.

Invicro purchase - already the second large deal of Konica Minolta in the field of medical business. In June, 2017 the Japanese vendor announced purchase for $1 billion the Ambry Genetics company specializing in genetic researches and the analysis of genetic information for screening of diseases, including oncological.

Konica Minolta — the ideal partner. The joint work perspective with it and with the Ambry command which recently was its part really inspires — Dr. Dr. Jack Hoppin, the cofounder and the CEO of Invicro commented. - We work with biomarkers, at the same time regardless of whether we work with medical pictures or scans of histologic medicines, we aim to turn complex biological analysis into accurate criteria for decision making at all stages of pharmaceutical development.

Invicro and Konica Minolta have one of the most powerful tool kits for digital visualization and data management which can be offered researchers in the field of biomedicine and to doctors — the top manager and the technical director of Konica Minolta of Kunihiro Koshizuka noted. - Our technologies and practices create huge opportunities for the innovative development which are not done not possessed by nobody in this industry. Expenses on researches and development of drugs grow, at the same time obtaining permission to their application happens very slowly therefore increase in efficiency of development of new drugs – an important issue for the pharmaceutical industry. Thanks to the new medical platform we will be able to offer the pharmaceutical companies economic candidate solutions of problems which they face[2] now]

Invicro will improve research work on development of drugs thanks to the intensive image processing allowing to optimize inspection and the analysis and also to increase diagnostics accuracy. For years of work the Invicro company collected a huge number of data and created the extensive customer base, the company was engaged in rendering services of high-quality image processing, the analysis and diagnostics for the international pharmaceutical companies, helping them to conduct researches for search of new drugs and supporting programs of clinical trials. The firm widely uses artificial intelligence for processing and the analysis of images and also applies the cloud solution allowing to manage huge information volumes to data storage.

Konica Minolta is not going to change structure of board of Invicro – doctor Hoppin will continue to head the company, the staff and its infrastructure will be left without changes. Invicro will continue scientific cooperation with sponsors of clinical trials and also to expand a range of offers in the field of medical visualization – thanks to the platform for exact medicine from Konica Minolta the opportunity for work in the field of clinical laboratory trials and genomics will appear.

Konica Minolta has a number of the important biomedical technologies allowing to improve search of new drugs and clinical trials, among them technology of immune coloring High-Sensitivity Tissue Testing (HSTT). Thanks to extensive communications of Invicro among the global pharmaceutical companies, Konica Minolta will be able to deliver to these companies of the solution, HSTT allowing to use effectively and also technologies of genetic diagnostics from Ambry which will help to reduce terms of researches and will accelerate development of new drugs.

HSTT is the own technology of Konica Minolta allowing to measure precisely arrangement and amount of proteins for treatment optimization by targetny medicines. On the accuracy of HSTT considerably exceeds traditional technologies of immunocolouring. HSTT provides high-precision diagnostics and more exact picture of a disease of the patient at an early stage, these data can be a source to information for inspections and the plan of clinical treatment.

"In combination with medical visualization and genomics advanced technology of HSTT gives revolutionary opportunities for diagnosis of all diseases, and first of all it is relevant for immunooncology, – doctor Hoppin adds. – The specialists of Invicro who are engaged in analytics and machine learning very much appreciate partnership with specialists in data processing of Konica Minolta and Ambry. All together they will be able to create the complete information solution which will fully allow to use HSTT and other technologies of exact medicine in the next ten years".

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