Partnership to boost digital pathology uptake in APACAstraZeneca and Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding to promote AI-powered digital pathology and biomarker testing for breast and lung cancer across nine Asian markets.According to a press release, the collaboration will support education and training initiatives in Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines to accelerate AI-assisted digital pathology adoption and improve biomarker testing, including HER2 assessment in breast cancer and TROP2 assessment in non-small cell lung cancer.The companies cited diagnostic gaps across Asia, where nearly half of global breast cancer cases and more than 60% of new lung cancer diagnoses occur, while only 17% of clinicians consider themselves very aware of advanced pathology technologies.SoftBank, SMBC back new digital health platformThe SMBC Group, Fujitsu and SoftBank have signed a business alliance agreement to develop and offer a new health data platform and personalised health AI agents in Japan. Based on a media release, the proposed platform will securely manage and use medical data held in healthcare information systems. It will also connect that medical data with personal health data controlled by individuals to power AI agents on a mobile health application that supports daily health management, medical consultations, ongoing treatment and post-treatment follow-up.The companies are targeting adoption by 60 million users and 4,000 medical institutions.India demos CRISPR-based sickle cell therapyIndia's Ministry of Tribal Affairs has showcased what it said is the country's first indigenous CRISPR-based gene therapy for sickle cell disease.Named after tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda, the therapy is being developed as an affordable gene-editing treatment for sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affects tribal populations in several parts of India. With 37.5 million rupees ($390,000) in funding, the research with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology was presented at a workshop in New Delhi.