NEW YORK – Biocartis announced on Tuesday a collaboration with HiloProbe to commercialize the latter's ColoNode test for nodal metastasis in colorectal cancer patients.
Under the agreement, Belgium-based Biocartis will distribute Swedish biotech HiloProbe's ColoNode as a manual kit to labs in select European countries. Following commercial uptake of the manual kit, the companies will consider developing a fully automated version for use with Biocartis' Idylla platform.
The CE-marked ColoNode assay estimates risk of recurrence through the expression of genes related to tumor aggressiveness in lymph nodes. The test detects and characterizes tumor cells in post-operative colorectal cancer lymph node samples and can analyze up to 100 percent of the lymph node volume, Biocartis said, adding that it is more sensitive in detecting tumor cells than hematoxylin and eosin staining.
Financial and other details of the collaboration were not provided.
"We are pleased to partner with HiloProbe on the distribution of the ColoNode kit," Biocartis CEO Roger Moody said in a statement. "This allows us to broaden our product offering to customers in the colorectal cancer domain, complementing tests for RAS biomarkers and MSI on our Idylla platform."
Biocartis also recently partnered with Apis Assay Technologies to help develop and commercialize Apis' Breast Cancer Subtyping assay on the Idylla platform.