Biopsy has been used as a gold standard for determining the extent of liver disease. But this method has its limitations and many times it fails to provide critical information about the severity of the disease to the pathologists. To overcome this disadvantage, Dr Dean Tai, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore developed the Fibro-Index and the Histo-Hepa techniques with Prof Hanry Yu.

Dr Dean Tai then joined hands with Dr Gideon Ho, an A*STAR national science scholar responsible for commercialization of A*STAR biomedical sciences technologies, to set up HistoIndex, a spin-off company of A*STAR, to bring these revolutionary platforms for the diagnosis of fibrosis to the market.

The company won the BioSpectrum Asia Pacific Bioscience Industry Emerging Company of the Year Award for 2012.

Since its inception in 2010, HistoIndex has created new standards of diagnosis for fibrosis and cancer. The difference that HistoIndex is bringing with its technology is the scalability into multiple organs and new harmonized standard of assessing the severity of fibrosis and cancer.

"HistoIndex is the first in the world to provide stain-free, three-dimensional, quantitative imaging solutions for visualizing and staging fibrosis. The laser-based imaging system, Genesis, is currently installed in our trial site hospitals and research labs," says Dr Giedon Ho, chief commercial officer, HistoIndex.