NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Cancer Research Technology, the technology commercialization arm of Cancer Research UK, said today that it will license certain intellectual property related to colorectal cancer risk assessment to the molecular diagnostics company ArcticDx.
Under the non-exclusive license agreement, ArcticDx will pay CRT an upfront payment and royalties from any sales of the biomarker-based test it plans to develop using the technology.
The test, called Colo Risk, is being developed to identify people who may be at higher risk for bowel cancer. ArcticDx CEO Greg Hines said the saliva-based test should be commercially available by the end of 2008.
The agreement will allow “some results” from Cancer Research UK-funded genome-wide association studies to be integrated into Colo Risk, CRT said, adding that these studies were “the first” to identify common SNPs that increase bowel cancer risk.