(Business Wire)  inviCRO, LLC, a leading provider of imaging service solutions and imaging analysis software for research and drug development, announced today its expansion of histology capabilities with the acquisition of a Seattle-based histology team and the opening of inviCRO Seattle.

This new team of scientists, with over 15 years collective expertise in histological services and analysis, will form the new division called inviCRO Seattle and will operate a dedicated, full-service histology facility. The expansion brings specialized histology and densitometry to inviCRO’s current histology and ex vivo services, offered from their advanced preclinical imaging facility in Boston. The addition of the Seattle operation’s GLP-compliant routine and specialized histology, including ocular, renal, bone and CNS expertise as well as histopathology, histomorphometry, and immunohistochemistry, will create a full suite of histology offerings for inviCRO. The expansion will create an even more comprehensive contract research platform that leverages inviCRO’s advanced analytics and software tools.

"Integrating the expertise of our new colleagues into inviCRO’s current capabilities will allow us to provide the most comprehensive suite of imaging solutions in the industry," said Dr. Matt Silva, inviCRO's Senior Director of Imaging Research. "Confirmation of in vivo imaging results often requires use of gold-standard histological or autoradiographic assays, and our ability to interrogate drug concentration and effects at the cell and tissue level has increased dramatically with the addition of the Seattle team. The expansion of inviCRO’s portfolio of services from histology through to pre-clinical and clinical imaging and analysis services is representative of the importance we place on being a premier scientific partner to our customers.”

During this expansion of services, inviCRO also acquired related intellectual property pertaining to microCT-based tissue imaging methods that enable volumetric scanning to complement standard histological assays. The primary asset acquired by inviCRO is AltaBlu™, a vascular casting agent used to fill blood vessels for high-resolution CT scanning of the vascular architecture. The AltaBlu™ agent will soon be available to researchers through inviCRO to enable novel research and image analysis development pertaining to vessel dimensions, tortuosity, and branching.

"We're thrilled to bring our specialized experience to inviCRO, and are excited to couple our work with inviCRO’s unique bioinformatics capabilities," said Yan Liang, M.D., Ph.D., who will serve as inviCRO Seattle’s Senior Director of Histology. "Together we can advance the value of the insights our histological services provide to researchers, particularly as inviCRO continues to extend innovative three-dimensional visualization capabilities and analytical tools to histology."

Dr. Liang has extensive experience in drug development, as well as in the biomedical fields of bone, ocular, CNS and renal, and specifically in histology, immunohistochemistry, histomorphometry, and histopathology. She will lead the inviCRO Seattle team along with Dr. Heather Ramsay, inviCRO Seattle’s Senior Scientific Director, who offers expertise in therapeutic and technological areas such as microCT imaging, densitometry, histology, histomorphometry, and biomechanical testing.

inviCRO Seattle is the latest in inviCRO's recent growth and comes before the further expansion of their headquarter facility in Boston. inviCRO also recently extended translational imaging capabilities through their co-managed cyclotron facility, the Translational Imaging Center, located on the campus of MPI Research, and continues to grow their base of worldwide partner institutions.

About inviCRO:

inviCRO is an imaging informatics company offering full-service tissue-to-human imaging, analysis and data management services powered by their industry-leading software platforms. In addition to their multi-modality imaging facility in Boston’s Innovation District, inviCRO’s services are delivered through a network of validated partners highlighted by the co-managed cyclotron facility at the Translational Imaging Center (inviCRO, MPI Research, 3DI). inviCRO’s image processing suite (VivoQuant™) and data management platform (iPACS®) are used by a majority of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies. The interdisciplinary team of inviCRO scientists have managed and/or processed 500+ imaging trials across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas.