NEW YORK (360Dx) – Lunaphore Technologies and A. Menarini Diagnostics today announced a strategic partnership to bring to market a new system that uses Lunaphore’s LabSat Frozen technology, an automated tissue staining system that aims to enable performing immunohistochemistry assays in a few minutes.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The technology will enable patients to benefit from a faster, better, and more personalized treatment starting in the operating room, the firms noted, adding that short turnaround times could provide clinical pathologists with "higher degrees of responsiveness" for urgent testing and enable IHC consultation during biopsy procedures.
Lunaphore was founded in 2014 to bring 'omics-like approaches to tissue diagnostics by developing next-generation microfluidic tissue autostainers.
Tissue sections for pathological analysis are typically prepared and preserved through paraffin-embedding or cryopreservation of samples, called frozen sections, that are used in urgent situations, such as emergency and transplant cases and intraoperative testing, the firms said. Frozen sections are typically dyed with non-specific stains for morphological examination because biomarker-specific immunohistochemistry is too time consuming, the firms said. LabSat Frozen aims to automate biomarker-specific frozen section IHC staining and provide "high-quality and reproducible outcomes without necessitating special reagents," they added.
Lunaphore’s CEO Ata Tuna Ciftlik said in a statement that Menarini has "an impressive understanding of the frozen sections segment" and a product portfolio that is complementary to its own. Menarini Diagnostics’ General Manager Fabio Piazzalunga said that the Menarini Group is making important investments in oncology and "this agreement confirms the commitment of the company in this field."