PathAI, a provider of AI-powered pathology, entered into a partnership with GSK, on HORIZON, a randomized Phase 2b non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) clinical trial.

The trial is designed to measure improvements in liver histology with GSK4532990 compared with placebo in participants with NASH and advanced fibrosis. PathAI’s role will be to generate, digitize, and analyze liver biopsy slides for central pathologist evaluation in addition to AI-powered histologic evaluation using PathAI’s AI-based Measurement of NASH Histology (AIM-NASH) tool. AIM-NASH metrics will be included as exploratory endpoints in this study.

PathAI will provide kitting, logistics, lab and analytical services to generate and analyze digitized H&E and Masson’s Trichome data for both pathologist consensus scoring, facilitated by PathAI’s Contributor Pathologist Network, and quantitative histologic evaluation, enabled by AIM-NASH.

The trial will utilize PathAI’s full end-to-end anatomical pathology services through the PathAI Biopharma Lab, located in Memphis, TN. PathAI’s biopharma lab will receive and accession trial subject biopsies, stain tissue sections, and create slides. The stained slides for each case will then be scanned using a whole slide image scanner and will be uploaded to PathAI’s digital pathology viewer, AISight, for assessment by pathologists and via AIM-NASH.

PathAI’s AIM-NASH product has been trained to detect and quantify key histological features of NASH, including those that are evaluated for disease severity assessment using the standard NASH Clinical Research Network scoring system. The product delivers slide-level scores for those features mirroring the standard, FDA-approved pathology workflow, in addition to delivering an extended range of quantitative, continuous features and scores for research exploration.

“We are excited to embark on this NASH trial with our partners at GSK, and we are confident that our novel AIM-NASH tool, and our end-to-end support in the NASH category will greatly improve the probability of technical and regulatory success,” said Andy Beck, CEO and co-founder of PathAI. “With GSK’s focus on AI and machine learning, and PathAI’s expertise in end-to-end AI-powered pathology, we believe this will be a fruitful collaboration and will advance the field with the goal of benefiting NASH patients.”

According to the two companies, the collaboration builds on PathAI and GSK’s multi-year partnership to accelerate scientific research and drug development programs in NASH and oncology, announced earlier this year.