Lunit and Roche collaboration to improve PD-L1 immunotherapy treatment rates: GlobalData

Lunit and Roche have recently partnered to integrate Lunit’s SCOPE PD-L1 AI diagnosis tool with Roche’s Digital Pathology platform. The partnership aims to assist in the measure of PD-L1 tumour proportion score (TPS) in cancer patients, which can then be used to determine if the patient is a candidate for immunotherapy medications. The new tool is likely to improve the rates of immunotherapy treatment by standardising staining interpretation, says GlobalData.

PD-L1 is a measurement of protein expression found in tumours, which is related to suppressing the immune response from the body in relation to the tumour. This protein is measured via a method known as immunohistochemical staining (IHC), which requires a physician to analyse the sample for the TPS score of the tumour. This determines the course of treatment for patients, which involves immunotherapy medications to treat the tumour.

David Beauchamp, Medical Analyst at GlobalData, comments, “However, the lack of consensus among physicians for how to score tumour samples has posed a major problem for doctors, as treatment options are dependent on the scoring system. The collaboration between Roche and Lunit could streamline this process, and ensure scoring is more accurate.”

The new addition to Roche’s Digital Pathology is part of an expansion to the service, which includes 20 AI-assisted algorithms from eight different partners.  The current market for these kind of AI algorithms is still emerging.

GlobalData’s pipeline product database is currently tracking two additional diagnostic tools at various stages of development for the measurement of PD-L1 in several different tumour types. Lunit’s SCOPE PD-L1 is the first of these diagnostic tools to reach market, and the partnership with Roche is likely to increase the number of use cases for the tool.

Beauchamp concludes, “This AI-assisted algorithm could be an incredibly useful tool for the diagnosis and treatment of PD-L1 positive tumours. Current methods suffer from a lack of standardisation during interpretation, which could lead to a patient not receiving treatment when they could benefit from it. By partnering with Roche, Lunit has also ensured that their algorithm is available to many physicians, who will hopefully utilise the tool to improve patient outcomes.”