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LifeSpan Biosciences and NEC Announce Partnership to Develop Cancer Diagnosis Support System

Seattle, December 2, 2003 - LifeSpan Biosciences, NEC Corporation and NEC Soft of Japan have entered into a collaboration to develop a cancer diagnosis support system to meet the needs of pathologists, oncologists and cancer patients for rapid and accurate detection and diagnosis assistance.

The diagnostic assistant uses enhanced image capture and computer analysis to detect cancer cells in pathology specimens and distinguish them from non-cancerous cells. It will assist pathologists, increasing their accuracy and productivity, and provide information crucial for the clinical management of individual cancer patients.

Through the partnership, LifeSpan, NEC, and NEC Soft plan to provide clinicians with a first-generation system that offers sophisticated image analysis and advanced diagnostic techniques. The cancer diagnosis support system will function as a stand-alone unit serving a single hospital and/or at a centralized core facility serving pathologists and clinicians regardless of their location.

Cancer, with its high prevalence and mortality rate, continues to rank among the world’s deadliest and most costly diseases. Thanks to advances in the fields of genetics and molecular biology during the 20^th century, we can look forward to continued progress in the 21^st century in our understanding the disease in its various forms as well as in prevention, detection, diagnosis, and clinical management of cancer that can both improve the quality of life and extend the life of cancer patients. To achieve this, it will be necessary to obtain as much key information as possible from all sources, including tissue biopsy, and make efficient use of that information. The cancer diagnostic decision support system will help address those needs.

To achieve the goals of the collaboration, each member of the joint development team brings unique technologies to the program. LifeSpan’s proprietary Automated Image Analysis System (ALIAS) will be further enhanced and integrated with NEC and NEC Soft’s proprietary advanced machine learning and image detection technologies developed at NEC’s Fundamental Research Laboratories.

The diagnostic assistant is based on both existing and new technologies that will be developed by the development team. It will be capable of acquiring and analyzing cell and tissue images using current techniques, as well as utilizing advances in molecular and cellular diagnostic techniques. In addition, the end-users will be provided with up to date information that can help them assess the significance of the data captured by the System.

The diagnostic assistant will first be developed as a tool to allow researchers to expand their knowledge of the disease, to develop new detection methods and identify new diagnostic features of cancer. The joint development effort will move within about two years of start-up to provide an automated clinical diagnostic system for use by pathologists to assist them in providing clinically useful information. In addition, integration of the cancer diagnostic system with other elements that contribute to clinical management including providing expert decision support to pathologists and clinicians at locations distant from a core facility is included in the program roadmap.

The joint development program will be greatly aided by the advice and guidance of Drs Kiyoshi Mukai and Masahiko Kuroda of Tokyo Medical University and Drs Bruce Kulander, Ronald Tickman, and Nan Ping Wang associated with Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, Washington. A panel of experts in the fields of pathology and oncology will join them to help the Joint Program satisfy clinical decision support needs that in turn can make detection and diagnosis even more accurate and timely.

LifeSpan Biosciences is a privately held molecular pathology service and development support company located in Seattle, Washington. LifeSpan, through its advanced imaging technologies, ALIAS, and its expertise in pathology provides key information used by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to select and advance promising therapeutic candidates through the drug development process.

NEC Corporation is a global IT company with headquarters in Tokyo. NEC has an ongoing program in Bio-IT that draws on the technologies discovered and developed by its laboratories around the world. In this way, NEC aims to provide solutions and applications to enhance discovery and the delivery of more effective healthcare measures for everyone.