UPMC and 3Scan to Collaborate on Catalog of Tissue Data Using 3D Imaging

3Scan, Inc., a San Francisco-based 3D tissue data platform provider, announced the company will collaborate with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) on developing a comprehensive catalog of human tissue information. Specifically, 3D Scan and UPMC intend to make available a diverse catalog of spatially-indexed human tissue samples from across an array of patient profiles, tissue types and representative disease states.

3Scan utilizes a proprietary imaging platform to gather microscopy data from across large volumes of tissue and records quantitative data regarding size, density, position, and other relevant characteristics. When applied to a curated supply of samples provided by UPMC, this technology will grow to become a robust catalog of representative medical cases that will provide a rich data set to which medical researchers, drug discovery scientists, and clinical development professionals can subscribe to further scientific discovery.

“The collaboration between 3Scan and UPMC is a unique effort to visualize the 3D structure of a variety of tissues and disease processes,” says Rajiv Dhir, MD, MBA, vice chair of pathology at UPMC. “This knowledge will help compare the architecture of normal and diseased tissues. [And], it will finally lead to a better understanding of the interplay between the different tissue compartments—diseased and normal, epithelial, mesenchymal, inflammatory)—and will, hopefully, provide insights leading to better diagnostic modalities and therapeutic interventions.”

Adds Navid Farahani, MD, chief medical information officer at 3Scan: “This marks the beginning of a momentous collaboration which aims to validate centuries of anatomical and histopathologic understandings of tissue, a feat that is long overdue. By mapping intrinsically three-dimensional biologic structures using volumetric techniques, we are bound to further our understanding of subtle and gradual cellular phenotypic changes along anatomical axes. Inevitably, we will discover novel signatures of both normal and abnormal tissues.”