Indica Labs’ London HALO® User Group Meeting

Indica Labs is pleased to announce their 9th Annual HALO® User Group Meeting to be held in conjunction with the Digital Pathology & AI Congress in London on Wednesday, December 6 at the InterContinental London (the O2) from [12:00] – [16:00]. A lunch will be provided to all pre-registered attendees.

The program this year features six outstanding guest speakers representing leading universities, NHS Trusts, and pharma companies who will discuss how they use HALO products from Indica Labs in basic science research, translational research, and in the clinic. In addition to the guest speakers, Indica Labs will present a case study from their Cloud Services team, an introduction to their Pharma Services offering, and an introduction to the upcoming 4.0 release of HALO.

Indica Labs welcomes anyone who is interested in learning more about their quantitative digital pathology solutions to register for the meeting. You do not need to be a current Indica Labs customer to attend.

Kate Lillard, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer

Indica Labs

Kate Lillard received her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, followed by a Howard Hughes postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. While conducting research in the area of stem cell biology and oncology as a graduate and postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Lillard developed a keen interest in IHC which led to her joining Aperio in 2007 where she supported and then managed image analysis products for digital pathology. After acquisition of Aperio by Leica in late 2012, Dr. Lillard joined Indica Labs as Chief Scientific Officer where she supports, promotes, and helps guide the development of digital pathology image analysis solutions for the life sciences.

Adam Smith

VP, Life Science Applications, Global 

Indica Labs  

Adam is the VP of Life Science Applications at Indica Labs, Inc. He earned a BS in Biology from Ursinus College in 2004. Adam began his professional career as a biologist in the Safety Assessment department of Merck Research Laboratories in the fall of 2004. During his time at Merck he developed skills in the pathology labs from necropsy to immunohistochemistry. In 2006, Adam worked as part of a team at Merck to implement and perform a GLP validation of their digital pathology system, connecting pathologists at multiple global sites. He worked as the digital pathology lead for Merck’s Safety Assessment group, and developed image analysis protocols that have aided in establishing the safety profiles of several compounds. In 2015, Adam joined Indica Labs as an application scientist, providing training and workflow support to customers world-wide. He was promoted to Strategic Account Manager in 2017, then to Director of Life Science Applications in 2020. During that time, Adam specialized in working with customers who have a multi-site global presence in order to connect their research laboratories through the use of Indica Labs’ suite of life sciences products. Most recently, Adam was promoted to the VP of Life Science Applications role, leading the global Sales and Applications Scientist team at Indica Labs.

Martin Isabelle, PhD

Associate Director, Tumor Profiling and Mechanistic Biology, Translational Sciences

Adaptimmune

Martin Isabelle received his BSc Hons degree (1999) in Biochemistry at the University of Lancaster, Lancaster, UK, and has received his PhD degree (2008) in the field of medical diagnostics and imaging at the Dept of Material and Medical Sciences and Cranfield Postgraduate Medical School (CPMS), Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK. He subsequently worked in several postdoctoral fellow/Research associate fellow positions for 8 years at Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, New Hampshire, USA; University of Victoria and British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA), Vancouver Island, BC, Canada and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital NHS Trust, Gloucester, UK.

In April 2020, Martin worked as a scientific investigator in the bioimaging and preclinical histology departments at GSK, Stevenage, UK. The team was involved in developing multiple spatial biology and multiplex imaging technologies and applications for GSK’s immuno-oncology programs.

Since November 2021, Martin leads the Tumor profiling and mechanistic biology team within Translational Sciences at Adaptimmune. His team is responsible for analyzing clinical tumor biopsies from Adaptimmune’s clinical programs, detecting and quantifying the presence of Adaptimmune’s engineered T cells and understanding the tumor microenvironment and its contribution to the immunotherapy treatment efficacy and supporting new TME target discoveries. His team utilizes multiple multiplex staining and imaging technologies, principally spatial immunophenotyping, alongside bulk and spatial genomics and transcriptomics profiling.

António Polónia, MD

Surgical Pathologist 

Ipatimup Diagnostics

Dr. Polónia obtained his degree in Medicine from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and was a Resident in Anatomic Pathology at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Porto. He obtained his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, studying the prognostic and predictive value of HER2 and PDL1 biomarkers in breast cancer. He has published more than 40 articles in journals with an impact factor (15 as first or last author), with a special interest in HER2 positive breast cancer and the application of artificial intelligence in Pathology (digital/computational pathology). Dr. Polónia is the Co-Chair of the Digital and Computational Pathology Working Group of the European Pathology Society (2021-2025). He is a Surgical Pathologist at Ipatimup since 2013, responsible for the area of breast pathology, including in situ hybridization (ISH) exams.

Lydia Schönpflug

Data Scientist 

University and University Hospital Zürich

Lydia obtained her undergraduate degree in engineering at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University and went on to obtain her M. Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Stuttgart. She is presently a Data Scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Viktor Koelzer at the University and University Hospital Zürich.

Ines Nearchou, PhD

Senior Imaging Scientist

Indica Labs

Dr. Ines Nearchou is a cancer biologist and image analysis expert. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews, focusing on the development of cancer prognostic models using image analysis in pathology images. Prior to joining Indica Labs, Ines was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Defense Medical College in Japan, specializing in deep-learning image analysis for diverse cancer types. Currently, as a Senior Imaging Scientist at Indica Labs’ Pharma Services group, Ines provides quantitative histopathology image analysis services for biomarker assays.

Tereza Losmanová, MD

Pathologist

Institute of Tissue Medicine and Pathology

University of Bern

Dr. Tereza Losmanova is a surgical pathologist with specializations in pulmonary and cardiovascular pathology, urinary pathology, and, more recently, cytology, having honed her expertise during her residency and subsequent tenure as a staff pathologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. While her research initially centered on non-small cell lung cancer, over the years, her interest has transitioned to the promising domains of digital pathology and cytology.

Paul Chenery

Head of Quality, Training, & Strategic Improvement

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust

Paul Chenery is currently the Head of Quality, Training, and Strategic Improvement within Cellular Pathology at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH). His training has been focused on Histopathology, starting his career 13 years ago working as a Medical Laboratory Assistant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals straight from university. Paul developed, progressed, and advanced to the Molecular Lead role at Sheffield before taking up the Quality and Training Manager role at NUH. He was then promoted to his current position as a Senior Manager and is responsible for leading one of the biggest and most successful transformational changes within the department earning recognition nationally. Paul values inclusivity in the workplace and has a passion to guide and mentor. He has aspirations to progress through senior management to divisional/executive levels being able to influence a broader scope of practice, helping departments to embrace change, and developing a continual improvement culture.

Mark Housley

Advanced Biomedical Scientist and Transformation Lead

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust

Mark joined the NHS, Cellular Pathology in 2015 in a role within the Research and Innovation branch of Histopathology at Nottingham Health Science Biobank. This involved patient consent to research trials, collecting and collating tissue samples, and clinical information for internal to international research projects.

After two years, Mark joined the Cellular Pathology diagnostic team as a registered Biomedical Scientist, performing all of the core Histopathology techniques as well as performing Moh’s intraoperative service, renal attendance, and diagnostic Cytopathology. In 2019 Mark moved into a role within Neuropathology and Pediatric Pathology as a Specialist Biomedical Scientist. This covered a range of specialist techniques, post-mortem and bereavement services.

Mark started his current role as an Advanced Biomedical Scientist and Transformation Lead in October 2022. Current projects include the improvement of turnaround times using lean methodologies, the journey to digital accreditation, and the implementation of digital immunofluorescence. The role is further integrated into the major aspects of quality and training.

Billy Heseltine

Director of Cloud Services

Indica Labs

Billy is responsible for Indica Labs Cloud Services, specializing in the deployment and management of cloud environments optimized for Digital Pathology. Billy holds both AWS Certified Solutions Architect and HashiCorp Terraform certifications and has over 10 years of industry experience within IT. Billy joined Indica Labs as a Technical Solutions Engineer in 2018, was promoted to Technical Solutions Manager, EMEA in 2021, and moved into Technical Product Management in 2022 before his most recent promotion to Director of Cloud Services.

• The Beginnings of Computational Pathology w/ Jeroen van der Laak, Radboud UMC
• A role for HALO® in characterizing cell heterogeneity across organ systems: from the liver to the brain
• 12 Years of Digital Pathology Innovation and What to Expect Next w/ Kate Lillard Tunstall, Indica Labs
• Sneak Peek: HALO AP® 2.2 and HALO Breast IHC AI (RUO)
• Lung PD-L1 AI: Development and Validation of an Automated PD-L1 Tumor Proportion Scoring Algorithm in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer