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In their blood
July 2012
EDIT CONNECT
SHARING OPTIONS:
LAUSANNE, Switzerland—Biocartis SA announced in late May
that its researchers—in collaboration with
researchers at the Hinxton,
U.K.-based Wellcome Trust Sanger
Institute and at Eindhoven, the
Netherlands-based Philips
Research—are developing a novel workflow for
extraction, amplification and detection of tumor DNA on Biocartis' diagnostic
platforms.
Although three parties are involved in the work, Biocartis
reports that it will retain its full
intellectual property rights, along with
access to intellectual property created during the scope of this collaboration.
The partners believe that availability of this kind of
test—an automated blood-based assay system for monitoring tumor load—
will have
a major impact on personalizing the treatment of tumors, thus increasing the
quality of clinical care and the quality of life for cancer
patients.
"Individual decisions on treatment duration and intensity
will be in reach and ultimately,
this could allow drugs to be targeted to only
those patients who show meaningful response, reducing unnecessary side effects
and improving
effectiveness," Biocartis noted in the news release about the deal.
Cancer is caused by the
accumulation of genetic damage in
cells within a particular organ, Biocartis pointed out, adding that because
these mutations are only found in the
cancerous cells, they could be used to
monitor the tumor load during treatment and rapidly evaluate treatment
response.
"The system will use disposable, microfluidic cartridges
with digitally encoded microparticles for the rapid and sensitive
detection of
multiple DNA samples. The test aims to be highly specific and sensitive, being
able to isolate and detect just a few molecules of tumor
DNA per milliliter of
blood," said Dr. Patrick van den Bogaard, director of life science research at
Biocartis, in an official statement. "To
implement such tests in a real-world
healthcare system requires development of fully automated, high-multiplexing
diagnostic instruments and
technology, which is the core focus of Biocartis."
This is the first time Biocartis has
collaborated with
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Philips Research. Ultimately, the test they
design is envisioned as being broadly applicable for
all types of solid,
metastatic tumors, according to Nader Donzel, chief technology officer at
Biocartis and head of its DMAT business unit. DMAT, which
stands for Dynamic
Multi-Analyte Technology, is the codename of Biocartis' Multiplex Assay
Platform, which enables accelerated development of multi-
analyte assays,
reduces time-to-result and hands-on time, and provides high-quality protein and
nucleic acid-based biomarker analysis.
"From a timing perspective, this collaboration is well
placed in the sense that as a company, you find yourself at
a juncture—as we
are now—where you feel that your technology offers significant advantages over
existing technology, but you don't have the full
package of funding, data or
support that you need," Donzel tells ddn.
"So, coming into this collaboration was an excellent way to
demonstrate and
validate Biocartis' claims of its technology and have access to patient samples
and expanded opportunities. For the other partners, it
opens for them a
clinical perspective that they cannot achieve with other technologies and
offers them a new way of looking at the solutions that can
get them faster and
better clinical data." Code: E071215 Back |
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