NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – NanoString Technologies said after the close of the market Tuesday that several US clinical laboratories will adopt the company's breast cancer assay starting in the first quarter of 2014.
Among those who will offer NanoString's Prosigna Breast Cancer Prognostic Gene Signature Assay are Arup Laboratories, Laboratory Corporation of America, and Quest Diagnostics. Additionally, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center "will be among the initial wave of facilities to offer the Prosigna Assay in 2014," NanoString said.
The Prosigna test, which is based on the PAM50 gene signature, runs on NanoString's nCounter Dx Analysis System and provides a risk category and numerical score to evaluate the risk of distant recurrence of disease at 10 years in postmenopausal women with node-negative or node-positive hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. It measures gene expression levels of RNA extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded breast tumor tissue that previously was diagnosed as invasive breast carcinoma.
The assay has been available in Europe and Israel since February, and in September the US Food and Drug Administration cleared the assay for marketing in the US.
In early Wednesday trade on the Nasdaq shares of NanoString were up 17 percent at $16.38.