ABOUT US
Our Story
Clarapath was founded in 2014 as a spin-off of Dr. Partha Mitra's research on high-throughput neuroanatomy at Cold Spring Harbor Labs. In order to facilitate whole-brain digital neuroanatomy research, Dr. Mitra was processing hundreds of thousands of tissue samples using the tape-transfer method for high-quality microtomy (cutting tissue into micrometer-thin sections for further analysis). The tape-transfer method was originally developed to facilitate the transport of only frozen tissue sections to glass slides for clinical application of anatomic pathology. Historically, tape-transfer has not been used for paraffin wax tissue processing.
Based on this experience, Dr. Mitra had the idea to use the tape-transfer method as a foundation to develop a fully automated microtomy system. The device, named SectionStar, takes paraffin tissue blocks as inputs and provides glass slides with sliced tissue as outputs. The device is being developed in close concert with Northwell Health and the Northwell Health Laboratory. SectionStar will be transformative toward improving patient care, decreasing costs, and enhancing the quality and consistency of tissue preparation. The SectionStar further automates the last remaining manual process in histopathology.
Automating microtomy shouldn't take 100 years
The last remaining manual step in tissue processing
Fixation
AUTOMATED
Processing
AUTOMATED
Embedding
AUTOMATED
Microtomy
MANUAL
Staining
AUTOMATED
Today's histology labs are rife with operational & quality challenges
Our journey to enhance pathology started with a operational shortage
NOT SCALABLE
Microtomy is a bottleneck for increased lab throughput with a 1:1 labor-to-output ratio
INEFFICIENT
Biopsy turnaround time is often delayed and labs can't keep up with the demand
HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE
Quality is heavily influenced by the operator and there is a lack of a "gold standard" in terms of quality of slide consistency
EXPENSIVE
Skilled human labor is a major lab expense and labor supply is on the decline - vacancy rates are approaching 10% for histotechnologists
HARMFUL
Histology is a central element of practicing medicine and approximately 6% of detected errors lead to patient harm
PRONE TO ERROR
Traditional water bath leads to tearing, folding & "float" and 99% of errors are preventable human errors
Meet The Team
Dr. Partha Mitra, Ph.D.
Founder & Chief Scientific Advisor
Eric Feinstein
Chief Executive Officer
Baris Yagci, Ph.D.
R&D Director
Jay Sewkarran
Director of Information Technology
Kavita Sethi
HR & Finance
Matthew Claster
Corporate Development & Strategy
Robert Shusko
Engineering Project Manager
Dmitry Khavulya
Principal Software Engineer
Jerry Pinto, Ph.D.
Principal Materials Engineer
Weston Smith
Mechanical Engineer
Jonathan Gardi, Ph.D.
User Interface Software Engineer
Steven L. Smith, Ph.D.
Principal Optical Engineer
Maliha Momtaj
Operations & Special Projects
Board of Directors
Dr. Partha Mitra, Ph.D.
Sherry Liu
Charles Cantor, Ph.D.
David Eigen
Robert Stallone
James Crawford, MD, Ph.D.
Michael Shelanski, MD, Ph.D.
Clinical & Scientific Advisors
James Crawford, MD, Ph.D.
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SVP, Lab Services, Northwell Health
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Chairman, Department of Pathology, Zucker School of Medicine
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Professor, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
Robert Stallone
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VP of Lab Services, Northwell Health
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Founding Member, COMPASS Group
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Previously Roche Diagnostics, Sysmex Corporation, UBS
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Member of the AACC & CLMA
Daniel T. Barry, MD, Ph.D.
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NASA Astronaut, Retired
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Founder & President, Denbar Robotics
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Co-Founder, FellowAI
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Co-Chair of Faculty of AI, Singularity University
David Kleinfeld
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Professor, University of California
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Principal Investigator, David Kleinfeld Laboratory
Patrik Dahlen, Ph.D.
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Biochemistry expert
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Former CEO, Dako, Chempac, Neurosearch and Immunodiagnostic Systems
Michael Shelanski, MD, Ph.D.
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Former Chairman, Department of Pathology, Columbia University
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Sr. Vice Dean, Research, Columbia University
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Co-Director, Taub Institute
Charles Cantor, Ph.D.
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Director for the Center of Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University
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Previously CSO of Sequenom
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Co-founder of Retrope
Yukako Yagi, Ph.D.
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Director, Pathology Imaging Center, Mass General Hospital
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Assistant Professor Pathology, Harvard Medical School