Waiv, formerly Owkin Dx , a Paris-based company advancing AI-based precision testing, announced that it has entered into a collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo (TSE: 4568) to drive digital disease biomarker discovery for an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) program.

With deep expertise in heterogeneous disease and multimodal data, and a global data network spanning academic institutions, hospitals, and laboratories, Waiv has a demonstrated track record of delivering AI-powered biomarker solutions across the entire drug development lifecycle.

As part of this collaboration, Waiv will apply its end-to-end computational pathology platform to early-stage data. This includes analysis of the tumor microenvironment (TME) in hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)- and immunohistochemistry (IHC)-stained samples, as well as biomarker identification and outcome prediction capabilities aimed at identifying biomarkers of treatment response prior to later-stage clinical trials.

The purpose-built AI strategy addresses one of the most complex challenges in pharmaceuticals: identifying biomarkers in fewer than 100 patients for ADC drugs.

Waiv's computational pathology platform was specifically designed for data-constrained environments and is supported by a suite of core models developed from hundreds of thousands of images from its international data network. Its strategy includes:

• Developing custom AI models for low-data environments
• Extracting predictive signals directly from whole-slide images of H&E- and IHC-stained specimens
• Identification of novel histopathological biomarkers beyond predefined capabilities
• Providing reproducible and interpretable results suitable for clinical decision making

"Identifying patients who will respond to a therapy directly from the pathology slide is both one of the most challenging problems and one of the most significant opportunities in oncology drug development. This is exactly what we've accomplished to enable Waiv," said Meriem Sefta, CEO and co-founder of Waiv. "This collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo reflects our ability to engage early and guide biomarkers through the entire pipeline, culminating in clinically validated, ready-to-use tests. It's precisely this ability to see the process from start to finish that makes us valuable partners in the long run."