In collaboration with researchers from University of Southern California and Osaka University DRVision will develop a machine learning enabled informatics tool for the discovery of predictive phenotypes in neurological diseases.
DRVision Technologies LLC, pioneer in machine learning and image based decision applications, has been granted up to $3.04 million from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to develop a machine learning enabled kinetic informatics discovery (KID) tool.
Supported by the Fast-Track Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant, DRVision will develop the KID tool to analyze dynamic events from patient-derived cell models using time-lapse microscopy and live cell fluorescent reporters. The KID tool will be used to discover disease predictive phenotypes and score patients based on the phenotypes.
The initial focus of the KID tool will be on neurological diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer’s Disease and Autism. In the long term, KID could be adopted for translational research using patient-derived cell models in other diseases. The successful development of KID could facilitate a paradigm shift towards broad adoption of patient-cell models and predictive biomarkers for therapeutics discovery, optimization, stratification and diagnostic discovery.
The project involves close collaboration between DRVision, Dr. Justin Ichida at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research of the University of Southern California, and Dr. Takeharu Nagai at the Department of Biomolecular Energetics, Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research of the Osaka University in Japan.
“We are extremely excited about the close collaboration with Dr. Ichida and Dr. Nagai on this pioneering project to improve health care. At the same time this project would accelerate our goal to become a market leader in machine learning enabled microscopy informatics tools.” said Dr. James Lee, President and CEO of DRVision and principal investigator for the new project.
“This ground-breaking project will create a tool that could play a critical role in the way we study neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, this project strengthens our existing R&D collaboration with DRVision – our other project, which also includes Icagen Inc., is funded by the Department of Defense and focuses on high content drug screening for ALS using patient-derived cell models” said Dr. Ichida.
“We are very happy to be part of this endeavor. We will be developing live cell probes which could dramatically improve our ability to visualize and automatically identify meaningful cellular phenotypes in normal and disease states. Moreover, the fact we will be optimizing the tool using patient cells ensures our solution will be readily applicable for translational research worldwide” Said Dr. Nagai.
“We will deploy the technology created during this project (KID) in our publicly available software solutions (e.g. SVCell) – this will ensure the wider scientific and medical community can benefit from the project outcomes. Moreover, this project extends our synergistic business collaboration with Nikon Corporation, who acts as a commercial partner.” Said Dr. Luciano Lucas, Exec Vice President of Product Management and Sales.