Konica Minolta announced on Monday that it has purchased the contract research organization Invicro.
This follows on the heels of the acquisition of genetic testing and analysis company Ambry Genetics Corporation in early July.
Research and development expenses are increasing, but the process of approving pharmaceuticals for use is slow. The companies are looking to provide a cost-effective solution that will improve the productivity of new drug development.
Invicro provides imaging services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry from early-phase discovery to late-stage clinical trials. Dr. Jack Hoppin, co-founder and CEO, believes that Konica Minolta is the ideal partner to accelerate the impact of the informatics platform they have developed and deployed over the past decade.
Invicro streamlines drug research and development by inspecting, analyzing and diagnosing data-rich images. The company incorporated artificial intelligence technology into its proprietary image processing and analysis techniques, and maintains a cloud-based data storage solution.
Hoppin will remain CEO and no changes will be made to the rest of the company’s management structure. Its business operations will continue as usual, but Konica Minolta will expand its scope to include pathology and genomics.
The company is planning to draw on Invicro’s connections with global pharmaceutical companies to supply them with applications for its High-Sensitivity Tissue Testing pathology offering. HSTT is a proprietary technique that measures the location and quantity of proteins to optimize treatment with molecularly-targeted drugs.
Konica Minolta also plans to leverage Ambry’s genetic diagnostics technologies to help shorten research and development lead times and accelerate drug development.
"The analytics and machine-learning teams at Invicro are excited about partnering with processing teams at Konica Minolta and Ambry to form a global informatics offering aimed at accelerating the value proposition of HSTT and other precision medicine technologies over the next decade,” Hoppin said in a statement.
