NEW YORK ─ AnchorDx said on Thursday that it has entered into a multi-year collaboration with the Lung Cancer Initiative at Johnson & Johnson to conduct a four-year study to enable the early detection and diagnosis of lung cancer. Specifically, the agreement is with Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment.
Investigators will enroll and track the progress of more than 3,000 patients with pulmonary nodules identified by computed tomography scanning, according to AnchorDx, a developer of next-generation sequencing-based early cancer detection and disease monitoring tests.
The study will involve collecting and analyzing clinical, imaging, and pathological data, as well as biospecimens, the firm said.
The collaborators aim to develop lung cancer molecular diagnostic tests using molecular, clinical, and imaging-based artificial intelligence technologies, Zhong Nanshan, a professor at Guangzhou Medical University who is leading the study, said in a statement.
Financial and other terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.
Guangzhou, China-based AnchorDx has developed a cell-free DNA methylation test to distinguish benign from malignant pulmonary nodules in blood and has initiated large clinical validation studies for the assay. The largest study kicked off in 2018 and seeks to enroll more than 10,000 patients across 23 hospitals in China.